


Falling Apart All Around You

by PinkPenguinParade



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Bad stuff happens in history and the boys have to deal with it, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Existential Angst, M/M, Minor canon divergence, Pining, Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Scene: Soho 1967 (Good Omens), The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), but nothing too heavy I don't think, individual CWs per chapter, oh lord there's some pining, they finally get there, through the ages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkPenguinParade/pseuds/PinkPenguinParade
Summary: Aziraphale took a deep breath and stepped round the corner, trying to school his face into something properly angelic. "Be not afraid," he said. As opening gambits went it wasn't spectacular, but it was traditional and he wasn't up to inventing something on the spot.The demon Crawly stood there, defiant, a gaggle of children shoved behind him. "I won't let you take them. I don't care what Heaven thinks.""Be not afraid," the angel said again, focusing on the children who were, in fact, very, very afraid. His voice was going soft, and he resolutely avoided looking at Crawly. "I come not to harm thee."~~~~~~~OR, Aziraphale fell in love on the Ark. Crowley took a little longer. (Story is finished, will upload as editing and life allow.)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 90
Kudos: 259





	1. 3004 BC

**Author's Note:**

> PinkPenguin finds a nice little kinkmeme prompt about what if Aziraphale fell in love first, at the ark, watching Crowley sing to the kids? and then Crowley fell in love in 1967? And then I did this to it. Y'all, I don't even know what's going on in my brain. 
> 
> Thanks go out to LastSaskatchewanPirate and GeiaStGermaine for invaluable beta services in the 'letting me rant and drop text bits at you at all hours' department, and Raechem for invaluable beta services in the 'taking a look at the finished thing and giving me notes where I was going wrong and missing stuff' department. Y'all are all awesome and wonderful and any mistakes that remain are entirely mine.
> 
> Kinkmeme prompt at https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=715880
> 
> As usual, the fic is finished and will be uploaded over the course of the next few days as patience, scheduling, and line editing allows.

Aziraphale retreated around the corner and pressed his back to the wall; stuffed his fist into his mouth. This was, this was _not good,_ this could not be good. He knew he should report it and probably start smiting, he should put a _stop_ to it, but... he didn't want to do any of those things.

Just at the moment, the only thing he really wanted was to stop glowing.

This was getting out of hand. He was lighting up the whole corridor. A wandering mouse--the mice really had just taken to this entire thing too well--blinked at him curiously and fled. 

And he couldn't make the light stop. He tried to breathe--he didn't need to, not really, but he'd been here for a thousand years, living with the humans, and they tended to notice when someone wasn't breathing. It made them uncomfortable, and so he'd long got in the habit of it and now he couldn't stop.

He took deep breaths. One after the other after the other, over and over as he'd seen the humans do to try to calm themselves down.

His light was not dimming.

There was sound from the room behind, a susurrus of whispered commotion. He'd been seen, apparently, or at least the light had. There were small voices and a sob or two, then a deeper rumble, scared but reassuring.

If he wanted to quiet those scared small voices--and he did--he was going to have to go back around that corner. And then he was going to have to explain why he was glowing.

Aziraphale took another deep breath and stepped round the corner, trying to school his face into something properly angelic. "Be not afraid," he said. As opening gambits went it wasn't spectacular, but it was traditional and he didn't have to invent something on the spot.

The demon Crawly stood there, defiant, a gaggle of children shoved behind him. "I won't let you take them. I don't care what Heaven thinks."

"Be not afraid," the angel said again, focusing on the children who were, in fact, very, very afraid. His voice was going soft, and he resolutely avoided looking at Crawly. "I come not to harm thee."

"You're _glowing,"_ Crawly said. "Could you please turn that down? You're going to attract attention."

"I… It's dark down here," Aziraphale said. "Do you not want the light?"

Crawly gritted his teeth. "You are. Scaring. The kids."

"I... thought you would prefer being able to see me," he said. (It's not the first lie he's told. Not even the second, although not a patch on the lies he'll tell in the future. But it is the first time he's lied to the demon.)

The children, oddly, did not look any less scared. Aziraphale focused very hard and managed to shift most of the glow out through his fingertips, into a ball up towards the ceiling. It sat there, weak and watery, much dimmer than when it was coming from him.

Hmm. He thought for a moment, wondering, and then decided to try it--a wave in the direction of the ceiling brightened the light, changed its shade. Split it into pieces until there were three different colored globes close together.

A snap of his fingers, and he set them spinning.

The kids looked up at them, all eyes on the planks above them. Sniffles and sobs trailed off; it was but half a minute or so before one of the children laughed.

Aziraphale spun off another thought, and the lights began to dip and weave, the kids watching raptly. He stepped to the side, and then gave a tug on Crawly's shoulder when the demon was too busy watching the light to step after him.

"I still won't let you take them," Crawly said.

"I'm not here to take them," Aziraphale said. "Nobody consults me for policy decisions. But that also means nobody expects me to make policy decisions."

"Won't you get in trouble?"

"I can honestly say that I have absolutely no directives in this case." He felt a smile creeping to his lips, the first he has allowed himself since he came upon the scene. "I have no orders about what to do should I find stowaways. My standing orders, however, are to observe and help people."

"I…” Crawly looked at him, clearly concerned. “I'm not people."

"Perhaps not. Not, I admit, in the eyes of--” He flicked his gaze upward, then continued-- “But they are." He waved towards the children, who were still enjoying the light. "And they will clearly be harmed if anything happens to you."

Crawly gave him a look, wide-eyed in the shadows, the flow of the colored lights reflecting hypnotically off golden irises. "Are you sure you don't work for my side? Where did an angel learn to logic like that?"

Aziraphale winced slightly, thinking of conversations he'd had with Gabriel, but answered as straightforwardly as he could. "I have been on Earth for a thousand years, you know. I have learned many human things." _Like how to fall in love, apparently,_ he did not say. But he was terribly afraid it would be all over his face, so he turned to watch the children.

"You want me to believe you found us and you're just going to do... nothing?"

"Of course not. I'm going to go back up before I am missed, and I will disguise this room when I do. And then later I am going to bring you all some food, because you must be starving." He turned to go, before he lost control of his face again.

A hand grabbed his arm. "Can you--" Crawly said, and stopped when he didn't turn back immediately.

The demon's hand was warm through his robe. He winced at the sudden brightening of the lights and schooled his expression to angelic serenity before he let himself turn around. "Can I...? What is it that you need for them?" he said, because it never occurred to him that Crawly would be making a request for himself.

Crawly dropped his arm. "Erm. I mean. Well..." The demon waved at one of the kids--an older boy, maybe ten? They were all so young!--and he stood and pushed forward, clutching a bundle--

No, not a bundle, he saw as it moved. It was an infant. An infant!

The spinning lights brightened again.

"Nobody here makes milk, and he wouldn't come along without her. If there's any way you can bring milk...."

Aziraphale could feel his eyes shining. "Of course!" he said cheerfully. "You'll need some way to feed the baby. I'll find what I can." He started off, then stopped again, looking at the ragged group of children. "Do you want me to leave the lights?"

"You don't need to, I can make--"

"I like the lights!" a small voice piped up, and was joined by a chorus in agreement.

"Very well, I shall leave them for now," Aziraphale said. "They might not stay quite as pretty, but sitting in the dark is no fun at all." And he turned to go.

"Aziraphale," Crawly said.

"Yes?" The lights wavered behind him.

"You could have turned us in. Or started smiting."

"No. No, my dear. I don't think I could," he said, and fled before he could betray himself further.

***

This enormous ship was entirely too small.

Aziraphale carefully constructed a miracle to disguise the room the children--and the demon--were in, and hoped that nobody was paying too much attention to his power use at the moment. He'd been ordered to 'make sure the humans on the ark make it through safely', and that, well, that was a statement that suddenly had an astonishing amount of wiggle room. 

It was still raining. The ship was tossing, more than he had expected, and use of the deck was entirely cut off by lashing rain and the occasional wave breaking over it. He _could,_ he supposed, step out there without undue risk of discorporation, but he would have to expend more miracle to do it and it wouldn’t answer, anyway.

What he wanted, what he _needed_ and did not have, was time and quiet to be alone and try to sort everything. It's what he had been looking for in the first place when suddenly he had felt the overwhelming warmth of _love_ and tracked it to a flame-haired demon, surrounded by scared small humans. Crawly was _singing_ to them--not wiling or tempting but calming them, surrounded in their trust and faith, radiating love and outrage for these tiny salvaged scraps and he just couldn't help it, it welled up out of him like an oasis spring--

Aziraphale stuffed his knuckles in his mouth again and tried to stop thinking until he found a quiet place.

He was built, he knew, to serve. To serve the Almighty, and to serve and protect Her creations. And he was sore, in his heart where Heaven couldn't overhear--raw and resentful over having to watch so many of them die. He just wanted some time, somewhere nobody expected anything of him, just a small space of his own--

But he didn’t have a room here. He didn’t sleep; he didn’t need to eat (although he certainly had been known to enjoy it from time to time). He was supposed to observe and assist, not take up valuable time and space from the humans and animals that absolutely required it. He was supposed to be calm, to radiate the serenity of Heaven.

He wasn't supposed to be ragged and hurt. He wasn't supposed to have feelings that needed space, or to know the feel of this anger towards his superiors (he was very unsure of that one still, even in the privacy of his own mind, but it existed and he hadn’t managed to keep it away). He wasn't supposed to grieve.

He wasn’t supposed, he thought briefly, to fall in love. 

He most _definitely_ wasn’t supposed to fall in love with a demon.

And yet… there Crawly had been--thwarting the Plan, saving children who were not supposed to be saved. Tucked up wet and miserable in the darkest smelly bowels of the ark and singing love and comfort to them. Not with broken angelic harmonies but just a fine sweet clear _human_ voice and it just overwhelmed him, burst out of him like… like… 

Well, like a glow he couldn’t contain, actually.

(He had been told, of course, about demons. After the Fall they had said that demons had rejected all Her gifts and when after Eden he had asked, hesitantly, about demons again--feeling that he needed a bit more information if he was to be stationed on Earth and therefore dealing with them--he had been told that they were the worst of angels, everything good and gentle burned out of them by the Fall.)

(He had not, then, gone on to talk more about the demon he had sheltered on the Wall, who had been funny and kind and reassuring. He wasn't planning to report this, either.)

He had wandered near the carnivore pens--the lions watched him, fascinated and fascinating, as he paced. In the dark of the night, with most of Noah’s family asleep or close to it, he decided this was probably as near to peace as he was going to find and settled down on the floor outside swiping range of the deadly claws. 

Noah's family didn't really like the carnivores, so he might even have some peace, if he was lucky.

The wall was rough against his back. The swaying of the ship rocked him as he gave himself over to frantic thought. 

_How was this even possible?_

_Crawly_ was a _demon,_ he reminded himself, quite sternly. Demons didn't love. Demons didn't care. Demons didn't… No. He knew what love felt like.

He remembered the outrage and grief on Crawly's face, in his voice, on hearing that the children were to be killed along with their parents. The care the demon had shown in bringing the kids on board, in continuing to defend them. The readiness for a smiting, if necessary. 

_He remembered his own outrage, his own grief, in his mission briefing with Gabriel; how he had protested and then, after the archangel's rebuke, how he had swallowed the protestations like nuggets of fire. How he had stood next to a demon, and wished to be able to say the things he said, and how he had stayed silent._

Aziraphale pulled his knees up and hugged them, buried his face down into them and tried to cool the sudden heat in his cheeks. 

It might have been the abrupt knowledge of his love--he had certainly loved before, but not like this, not sweet as a pear and sharp as a knife and bright as the Heavenly grace he felt so unworthy of. And now he did, and it wasn't for humans, or for any of his own people, but for a _demon,_ of all creations.

It might also have been this new feeling of shame, which he had never felt like this. A little bit, here and there over the centuries, yes; Gabriel liked him to be a little ashamed of his human foibles. But nothing like this. He'd never before been ashamed of _not_ doing something. Not until now.

Especially he'd never been ashamed of doing as he was commanded. Not until now.

His corporation was shaking. He didn’t know why--he hadn’t told it to, but here he was.

He tried to convince himself that part of the shame was for loving a demon--wouldn't that make it easier? If Crawly could be the source of this?

But he knew better.

The lioness, wakeful, prowled the cage next to him making inquisitive sounds. He spun off a touch, a small miracle to make her think of the grassland heat of home, and felt her settle in.

He’d thought he'd been doing all right, considering. He'd retreated inside as the floodwaters rose, unable--unwilling, he now realized--to make himself stay on the deck and watch. The cries had been bad enough, and nowhere in the ark deep enough to silence them.

He should have stayed to watch, he thought, for the dozenth, the hundredth time. He should have borne witness. He should have argued harder for them, should have saved them should have saved them he _should have saved them!_

He screamed a little into his knees.

Crawly had saved them. Not all of them, not the adults, but Crawly…. 

Crawly was a demon. Crawly was a demon and Crawly had saved them and he, the angel of the Lord, had just watched, hadn't _even_ watched, just ran and hid and Crawly had saved them--

"Hey," a soft voice hissed by his knee, and he leapt up with a bitten-off scream.

"Whoa, whoa, okay, no ssmiting!" It was Crawly, in the snake form he'd worn in Eden, pulling back. "Ssorry, angel, I didn't mean to sstartle you!"

"Crawly!" Aziraphale's corporation was breathing hard, telling him it needed all the air. "I, I wasn't expecting you! Why are you a snake?" His hand clutched at his chest and he wasn't at all sure why it thought that was going to help, but his body had very strong ideas about it.

"Lesss consspicuouss," Crawly said, allowing himself to slither forward again. "Are you… okay?"

The frantic patter of his humanish heart was slowing and he leaned back against the wall. "Yes, fine. Corporation got a little excited. What did you need? Are the children all right?"

"Fine. Ssleeping. I might have encouraged that a little." Crawly slithered closer again with a hitch of his coils. "The lights… changed. They looked sad." A small forked tongue, incongruously pink, flickered out into the air. "You look sad."

He didn't want to lie to the demon again. "I'm… sure I'll be fine," he said finally. And he would. He would be fine, he'd have to be fine. He was quite certain that the repercussions of not being fine weren't something that he wanted to deal with, the next time he ended up in Gabriel's office.

"You're a pretty good liar, for an angel." He was still trying to suss out how he felt about that when the snake went on, "pretty awful liar for anyone else, though."

"I will, though. I'll be fine." Aziraphale sat, settling cross-legged on the rough planks. He tried to remind himself that Crawly was dangerous, he was a demon. He shouldn't want to invite him to slither up into his lap.

Crawly slithered closer, bumped his knee with his snout. "Not fine now, though."

"I… no." Aziraphale sighed. "Not fine now."

"My fault? Because of the kids?"

"Yes," he said absently, then saw Crawly start to pull away and immediately realized what the poor demon had been asking. "No! Not like that--I'm not sad that you brought them in!"

He wasn't sure how it was that a snake could even look hurt and confused, but apparently he could read that in Crawly's posture and head-tilt. "I'm not sad that you brought them in, Crawly. I'm glad you did. The reason I'm not fine is… because I _didn't."_

"But you're an angel."

"And I should have helped them." It was worse, saying it out loud; it grabbed something in him and pulled all his words spilling out after it. "I didn't help them and I didn't even watch, it's not right, it's not _good,_ why am I even here if I can't help them, there were so many innoc--!"

He cut off with a muffled yelp as Crawly lunged--reared back to strike as a serpent but landed in his human shape, pressing him into the wall with one hand covering his mouth. "Shut up, shut _up,_ stop it! What do you think you're doing?!"

Aziraphale froze--pinned to the wall, mouth immobilized, intensely conscious of Crawly's demonic presence in a way he hadn't been just a bit before. He held very still under the demon's body, in the demon's gaze, only the pounding of his heart to betray him.

"Mmpff?" he said, after a moment had passed.

Crawly had his head cocked to one side, listening silently for another few heartbeats, then turned the full force of those luminous golden eyes on Aziraphale. "How do you feel?"

"Mmpff," Aziraphale said again.

"I'm going to move my hand. _Do not_ finish what you were saying. Right?"

Aziraphale nodded, as much as he was able. He sighed out a breath when Crawly pulled his hand away. "How do you feel? Anything different? Strange? Painful?"

He took stock of himself and his humanish body. He definitely felt _different,_ staring into slitted gold with the demon pressing him into the wall. He might even classify it as strange, simply because it was so new. The force of Crawly's love for the children below wrapped around him, warmth on the edge of fire. And the moment he realized that the darkness behind Crawly wasn't just the corridor and animal pens but the feathered softness of night-black wings, the lurch his heart gave was sweetly related to pain.

But none of it felt _bad._

Aziraphale shook his head, gaze still locked on the demon's, not trusting his voice. Those bright-gold eyes shone, brilliant, reflective--

Oh. Of course. He was glowing again. No wonder Crawly's gaze was wide, wondering.

He laughed, just a small hitch of his body, and let his eyes close. Forced his hands down beside him before he forgot that he shouldn’t touch, that he wasn't allowed to feel. Not like this. "I haven't Fallen, I don't think. If that's what you're asking," he said quietly. 

"Hmm. See that you don't. I don't need the competition," Crawly said, with a whoosh of shifting air. 

Aziraphale opened his eyes and saw to his disappointment that Crawly had sat back from him. The feathered darkness that had sheltered them was hidden away again. 

He clenched his hands to stop himself reaching out to the space where they'd been.

***

Crawly disappeared shortly thereafter to go check on his kids. Aziraphale sat for a moment longer, thinking of the warmth of the demon's hand on his mouth, the demon's body against his own. 

Eventually he got up and convinced a friendly goat to give him some milk. Between the two of them, with some work, he and Crawly were able to arrange something that would let the baby suckle the milk. 

He watched over them, ragged group of orphans and refugees that they were. He watched over Noah and his family, over the ark and all the animals within, for days and weeks as the punishing rain lashed them with the anger of God.

He rationed out his miracles to stretch food supplies and keep calm among the animals, to repair such damage to the boat as they didn't have tools to fix. And then, when the rain finally stopped, he kept doing it for another two years until the waters at long last receded.

With a little experimentation, he was able to arrange lights for the children that did not feed directly on his emotional state. The kids seemed to enjoy it regardless, but Crawly was entirely too perceptive for him to risk that again.

Aziraphale took the memory of Crawly's skin on his own and shoved it down deep inside him, where he might not have to think about it every time he saw the nimble fingers soothe a hurt or perform some trick. He learned how to take his emotions and lock them away as well, and worked out how to mostly keep himself from shining in the darkness when he couldn’t stop himself from _feeling_ so very strongly.

He figured out how to keep busy, keep moving even when seeing the demon--his demon, he thought now, possessively--being kind and soft with the children.

And he very carefully kept his tongue between his teeth.

***

Eventually, they docked. Or that’s what Noah called it, anyway. Aziraphale would have called it an unpleasant crunch followed by the battered ship groaning horribly and listing to one side, but it was _done,_ it wasn't _moving_ for the first time in years, and for a creature of Heaven he was utterly entranced by the solidity of damp earth beneath his feet.

And still there was so much to be done! Supplies had to be offloaded and the animals needed to be sorted--simply keeping them all from killing each other before they could wander off to new dens and homes took all the attention and assistance Noah and his family could spare.

He made quite sure it did, in fact, so that no-one noticed a demon and his human brood sneaking away. 

And if maybe he was distracted by a flash of fire-bright hair? If maybe he started to shine a bit? Well, it was a bright sunny day and no one noticed that, either.

***

It was over three decades and far to the east before he ran across Crawly again, the demon encouraging gambling outside the marketplace. They strolled in the summer sun while Aziraphale heard about the ark children, now settled elsewhere. If village youngsters darted by to check out the pale visitor who was monopolizing their friend, well, he hoped he at least made them happy when he smiled at them. And if he steered them so he was always in the sunlight, that was surely not so very strange.

When next he felt his demon's presence and caught a glimpse of fire-bright hair, another ten years on in a crowded market in Egypt, he was in the middle of his Heaven-assigned work and had no time to pursue. By the time he was done convincing a plump merchant that some of the wealth he had hoarded might be well used for more spiritual purposes, it was late into the night and there was no sign of Crawly at all.

And so it went, for three centuries or so: glimpses that turned into chance meetings or remained frustratingly elusive, dinners and walks and idle chatter that touched on nothing of importance or centered around frustrations with one or the other of their sides.

And every time, Aziraphale's heart leapt and danced; every time, he felt that love for Earth and its children. Every time he sternly reminded himself that the things he was feeling were neither appropriate nor requited.

He'd gotten quite good at not glowing, he thought. He'd gotten quite good at not staring at the demon's hair, or gazing too long into eyes of amber and gold. He was an angel and Crawly was a demon and that was that, and any desire he had to reach or touch wasn't, wasn't _relevant,_ it wasn't _right._

And it worked. For a while. For about three hundred years.

***


	2. Circa 2700 BC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flame-bright, fire-bright hair leaned into his field of view, serpent's eyes quizzical. "Angel? You hurt? You don't look too good."
> 
> "I don't… think I'm imagining you. Am I?" His heart did its best to convince him, really, but it was a traitor anyway. His heart had told him to try to save the humans, and see how that worked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter--for most of the chapters, actually--include talking about and around the realities and aftermaths of human suffering, and depictions of characters dissociating. Also I have anglicized Christ's name for my own comfort in a way that manages to not touch my lingering religious sensibilities.

The others had gone, finally, and left him alone. Alone enough to stop trying to pretend he wasn't upset-- to stop pretending he wasn't crying, that his humanish lungs weren't choking on the smoke. 

They didn't even suggest that he go back to Heaven with them. He wouldn't have gone, anyway. He had work to do. But it might have been nice if they’d asked, instead of simply ordering him to spread the news to nearby cities. 

Before even that, though, now they were gone he could finally risk looking for survivors.

There was ash everywhere--on the rubble of buildings, in the market, choking the street. (On his hands, on his skin, ground into his robes). Ash, and salt. He smelled smoke, smelled _of_ smoke. He might never smell anything but smoke and char ever again. 

He had argued. He had reasoned and cajoled. He had walked the streets with Abram, over and again, looking for righteous men and finding… abusers and evil people, yes. But also victims and innocents and hundreds of people trying to survive.

He ripped half-burned timbers from where they had fallen, moved blackened stones from tumbled walls trying to see if maybe someone, anyone, was holding on.

_He had begged, in the end. For some way to save some of the people, just some of them--the powerless, the young, anyone. Not to have to watch everyone die. Not again._

He cast out with his angelic senses, looking for the spark of life, and found fire, and meat, and salt.

_He was still young enough to be surprised that they had been unmoved. He had spent time living down here with humans, and the other angels never had. They'd never stepped up to help with a difficult birth or held a newborn baby, never sat with the dying trying to give them peace. Never helped try to wrest good food from hard ground, or broken bread and danced at the ensuing harvest. He was still young enough, then, to think that they just didn't understand--that maybe, if he just found the right words, he could_ make _them understand._

"...Angel?"

Only one being ever addressed him like that. It might be lovely to see his demon. He didn't want anyone to call him angel right now, though.

It had been… a while, now, sitting in the lee of this blackened, half-collapsed wall. Out of the wind, out of sight of the worst of the fires. Night was falling. Maybe a second night by now.

Flame-bright, fire-bright hair leaned into his field of view, serpent's eyes quizzical. "Angel? You hurt? You don't look too good."

"I don't… think I'm imagining you. Am I?" His heart did its best to convince him, really, but it was a traitor anyway. His heart had told him to try to save the humans, and see how that worked out.

"You really don't look good. This is a bad place for a nap." Crawly reached a hand towards him, stopped just short of touching him. 

He stared at it. "I don't sleep."

"You should definitely try it. Now. Away from here." Crawly kept his voice even, gently reached forward a little more. 

He'd seen this before, he realized, when the demon had cajoled the children into cooperating. "Don't talk to me like a child. I'm not a child."

"Didn't say you were. But this is a bad place to be." The hand hovered there, as though he could do this all day. "There's too much... smoke."

"I couldn't save them," he said miserably. "I couldn't save anyone."

_"Aziraphale,"_ Crawly said sharply. "This is not a conversation you want to have in a place that reeks of Heaven, yeah?" The hand, still outstretched, crept forward a tiny bit more, until it rested softly on his shoulder. "Let’s get you someplace to get cleaned up."

Crawly's hand was warm. He wanted more of it and he wanted to push it away and he wanted _more_ of it--the touch made his skin crawl and tighten in ways he couldn't quite process right now. "I tried to save them. I did. I wanted to save them but Heaven said they were all guilty. How can a baby be guilty? Why couldn't I save any of them, again? Was I supposed to just be glad that it wasn't flood this ti--?"

He'd forgotten how fast his serpent could strike until he found himself pinned again, hand pressed over his mouth, held against a different wall but in a very similar position.

"This place," Crawly said again, "reeks of Heaven. Do you think they can't hear you? Just because they've buggered off back upstairs?"

"Mmpff," said Aziraphale. Crawly's face was inches from his, and the overwhelming char was fading into the subtle sweet-apple-and-brimstone scent he'd come to associate with the demon.

"I think maybe you've forgotten who I am." The amber eyes were wide, hypnotic. “You're going to stand there, and you're going to listen to what I think. And you're not going to say a word.”

And so Aziraphale stayed there, as Crawly started off asking why She would kill the children and went round through a dozen other questions, getting more and more angry. Aziraphale stayed still and did not move.

The demon had warmed to his topic. By the time he wound down he seemed lit from within--wait. No, Aziraphale realized through the moisture gathering in his eyes, Crawly wasn't lit from within, he was lighted from without.

Aziraphale was glowing again. 

All his questions, all his concerns and his anger and his wretched, sobbing wounds were laid plainly out under the open sky by the demon's tongue. And he didn't have to say them out loud.

The concept of the grenade was millennia away, the concept of throwing oneself onto one similarly so. But that is nonetheless how the angel felt--all his questions and hurts laid bare without him having to voice them, as though all the dire consequences were being taken for him.

"... And why are you all lit up?" Crawly's rant ended with a little bit of perplexity. "You look like the full moon, angel."

"Mmpff," said Aziraphale.

Crawly tilted his head a little and looked down to where his hand still covered Aziraphale's mouth. He started to pull his hand away--

Aziraphale saw his reflected light flicker and dim an instant before he actually registered the incoming tickle in his senses. Crawly was already pulling back, but Aziraphale's hand shot out desperately to clutch at his arm. "Run," he whispered hoarsely.

His glow was fading, but it was enough to see Crawly looking at him as if he hadn't heard or didn't understand.

"Run," he said again, stronger this time. "You have to run."

"What--" Crawly didn't move, and he felt his heart start to break. He could feel the Host getting stronger, closer.

"They're coming. Run now," he said. _"Run!"_

His urgency must finally have broken through, because the demon's eyes widened and he took off--a quick sprint across sand and ash then the ground turned briefly molten around him as he dove into it.

Aziraphale just had time to send some lightning, a smiting strike on the demon's heels that blackened the melted sand, before the angels appeared.

It was Gabriel--of course it was Gabriel, he was in charge of Earth operations--and Sandalphon with him, as always. Aziraphale stood and scrubbed his hands across his face as they approached, trying to settle his nerves and compose himself.

He really could have gone another few centuries without seeing Sandalphon again.

"Aziraphale!" Gabriel was, as he was coming to expect, exuding jollity. 

"Ah. Yes. Hello, Gabriel. Sandalphon." He pulled his mouth into a smile. It felt ghastly. "Back so soon?"

"What's the problem, buddy? You should have been two towns along by now, spreading the word!"

"Oh, quite. I was… just on my way, you know. I only felt it was wise to check for--to make sure that all of the humans were properly gone. You know how slippery they can be!"

"There weren't any humans left," Sandalphon said. 

"He's very thorough." Gabriel nodded. "But… did I sense something evil, as we approached?"

"Very thorough," Aziraphale echoed faintly. "I'm sorry, did you say--"

"Definitely something evil," Sandalphon growled.

"Oh. Oh, _that!_ Oh, there was a, a demon who came sn--" Sandalphon circled around, watching him, and he broke off. "--sniffing around," he continued, fighting the urge to turn to keep him in sight. "I'm not… not sure what he wanted and I, I didn't stop to ask. I just sent him straight off with as strong a, a strike as I could." He nodded towards the burned patch of sand and glass on the desert floor, barely picked out by moonlight and the fading glow of cooling embers.

Gabriel walked out that way, conjured a brighter light to take a look at the blackened patch. "Well. Maybe it's a good thing you were here after all." 

"I can't imagine what he was after," Aziraphale said. "There's simply nobody left."

"As it should be!" Gabriel said cheerily, and clapped Aziraphale on the back. Aziraphale wasn't quite fast enough trying to conceal his wince, and this time Gabriel noticed. "Aziraphale," he said, more seriously. "You're not getting _attached_ to these humans, are you?"

"Oh. Oh, no," Aziraphale said. "Not at all. I know I'm only here to keep an eye on things and make sure everything goes to the way Heaven wants." He couldn't smell Crawly anymore; the smell of Heaven that Gabriel and Sandalphon had brought with them was mixing with smoke and ash until it seemed no time had passed after all.

"I know you _like_ them," Gabriel said, looking as though he couldn't fathom why. "But we're trusting you down here, buddy. I'd be so disappointed if it turned out you were--"

"Fraternizing," Sandalphon said, wrinkling up his nose in distaste.

_Fraternizing._ It carried echoes and undertones that sank claws into Aziraphale's heart. He had mostly been on assignment elsewhere during the whole distasteful business with the nephilim; he hadn't actually seen anything but the aftermath and cleanup. And he had wept, as things became clear, at finding out how his fellow angels had manipulated and betrayed humans, had treated them like objects.

“Fraternizing” was the charge that had been leveled at those angels, the ones who had used and hurt the humans. He loved humans, loved humanity. He wanted to help them, wanted to sit at their tables and listen to their stories and taste the wonderful things they made out of the plants and animals She had given them, see what clever new things they were coming up with. He wanted to save them.

The level of possession, of _use_ implied by that term made his skin creep with dread and a surprising slow nausea. He gulped, reached for confidence he didn't feel. "No, sir. Of course not."

"Great!" Gabriel said, all smiles again now he'd properly delivered his message. The archangel's hand still rested on his shoulder where it had landed so heavily earlier--where Crawly's hand had lain, reassuring and warm and so so different--and Aziraphale forced himself to be still as Gabriel gave a squeeze that was probably meant to be comradely.

“I should, should be going then?” he said. “Spreading the word to the neighboring towns?”

“Excellent!” Gabriel said, squeezing his shoulder one more time and letting go. “You know, Aziraphale, I'm always telling the rest of Heaven how much Earth Affairs depends on you. I know you'll do the right thing.”

Sandalphon moved back over to stand at Gabriel's side. “Yeah,” he said. “The right thing.”

And in a flash of ozone, they were gone.

The desert was dark and still, washed only in moonlight. Aziraphale waited a few more trembling moments before letting all the breath whoosh out of his humanish lungs.

And then, intensely conscious of his heavenly visitation, he turned and started walking down the road.

***

“You saved me.”

The voice came from behind him as he was picking through the fruit in a vendor's stall, three or four weeks and as many towns later. Aziraphale smiled--a bit more carefully than he used to, but his first genuine smile in awhile. “Crawly?”

“I haven't been able to figure out,” Crawly said, leaning around to face him, “why you saved me. No kids around this time. Nobody who was going to miss me.”

“You were kind--” Aziraphale started to say, and immediately Crawly’s hand was over his mouth again.

There was no wall here, though. And the fruit vendor was starting to stare. The demon removed his hand with a shake of his head and a furtive glance around the market.

“Ah ah ah,” he said. “None of that. I am not kind.”

“Oh, but you were--” Crawly’s eyes widened at him, hand twitching up “--very wicked,” Aziraphale finished, almost smoothly. “Very wicked indeed. Which is why I tried to smite you.”

“That's better. Probably could have gotten a commendation out of tempting you to Fall, of course, but you’d be bloody awful as a demon. Disgrace to the whole outfit, you.”

He could feel his smile starting to light up and was suddenly glad they were in bright sunshine. It was too dangerous, the events in the desert had shown him it was too dangerous. Heaven could be watching him at any time and the contents of his heart were only going to make more trouble. He couldn't do this again, he couldn't. He didn't dare.

He could at least leave it on a light note, though. It was the least he could do for his demon, who--no matter what he said--had been very kind.

“Let me at least buy you some fruit,” he said. “I'm meant to be helping the struggling vendors here.”

“Well, since you put it that way.” Crawly’s slender arm shot out and grabbed an apple, which he bit into with an obscenely loud crunch and then offered to Aziraphale. “Want a bite?”

Aziraphale was startled into a laugh, his first real one in what felt like years. “That didn't work last time, either. You wily serpent.”

Crawly grinned and tossed the apple up in the air, catching it and taking another bite. His golden eyes flashed and then he was gone, melted into the crowds.

The vendor looked extremely unhappy. “You had better pay for that!”

Aziraphale fished out the appropriate coins and a couple of extra, still trying to hide a smile.

***

33 AD 

It was finished.

Aziraphale stayed--because he had been tasked to witness, because he felt he owed it to Joshua's followers. Because he still regretted running away at the ark.

Crawly--no, _Crowley,_ he reminded himself--stayed. She didn't say why, and he didn't ask. But he rather suspected that at least part of why she stayed was simply because he did.

He did not reach out as they walked away, did not grasp hold of her for support. He had made himself rules, during the long years on the ark, and one of them was that he was not allowed to touch--never allowed to take what wasn't offered, to push the bounds of friendship.

_He had made himself other rules, over the thousands of years between then and now, and he had broken every one. He hadn't been able to stay away, or rebuke the demon into doing so. He had never successfully repented, because he did not regret his heart--how could love be wrong, no matter what Heaven might say? He wanted, yes, things he could never have, but the wanting itself… that did no harm. Right?_

Crowley had no such rules--she clung tightly to his arm as they staggered back to the dingy little inn where Aziraphale had rooms. He felt a bit fuzzy from hours in the sun and the close contact with his--with _the_ demon, he corrected himself, he had no right to think of Crowley as his--as well as from the swell of grief in Joshua's followers (and the demon beside him, and his own heart). He did not feel fuzzy from wine, but that was… correctable.

They didn't speak as they ascended the stairs, or as Crowley collapsed down onto the edge of the room's narrow pallet.

Aziraphale knelt and dug a jug of wine from his bags. When a quick search turned up only one cup he considered his options for a bare moment and took a mouthful directly from the jug instead.

It was a honeyed wine, oversweet but, right now, the better for it. He let the flavor flood his tongue, then held out the jug.

No response. He looked a little closer and found that the demon's eyes were closed. "Crawl--I mean, Crowley," he said.

She opened her eyes, looked at the jug with evident relief. _“Yes,”_ she said, and took a long pull of it.

"Why did you change it?" Aziraphale asked. 

She shrugged, swallowed and took a second long pull. "Bored of it," she said. "Tired of being expected to crawl for Hell." Another swig, and a long satisfied swallow. "Didn't want to be that person anymore," she said quietly.

"I shall endeavor to remember," Aziraphale said. And he would.

They drank in silence for a while. Another jug made an appearance from his bags and was summarily drained.

"He didn't have to be kind to me," Crowley said, into the silence.

Aziraphale thought about possible answers to that and even through the wine realized that most of them were... fraught.

"You should have kindness, my dear," he said at length. He was sitting slumped back against the wall, but watching carefully.

Crowley's eyes widened, amber in the lamplight. 

"Everyone should have some kindness," Aziraphale said, and discreetly summoned some more wine from his host's stocks.

Crowley laughed, harsh and ringing. "More wine? That's a proper idea of kindness right now, angel."

They drank some more in mostly silence. Aziraphale didn't trust his treacherous tongue this far into his cups; he daren't even guess what was going on in Crowley's heart right now. 

But there was light, and wine, and good company. Or company, at least. Crowley was rather crawling into the wine bottles as though she never intended to come back out.

"My side," he said morosely, and realized he might also be too wine-soaked for safety.

"What was that?"

"My side," Aziraphale said. "It's my side put him up there. All mine." He giggled, and clamped his teeth down on it. "Servants of Heaven. Did that."

Crowley looked at him wide-eyed for a moment. "Shhhush," she said, and gently fell over onto the mat.

"Crowley?"

When no answer was forthcoming, he scooted a bit closer and gently lifted her hair out of her face.

Crowley's eyes were closed. Well, mostly. A tiny bit of gold was just visible through the slits of them.

After a moment, she began to snore.

Aziraphale settled back against the wall and carefully miracled some of the alcohol out of his bloodstream. Not all of it--not nearly all of it, he wasn't ready for sobriety--but enough that he could keep watch and let his demon sleep peacefully.

***

1485 AD

The world was wrong. He was sure of it, but he hadn't figured out exactly what was bothering him. It was just a niggling sense at the bottom of his soul--something had gone bad, something wasn't right.

He'd been working on it for a couple of days and had come up with nothing. And so, as he often did, he briefly wished that Crowley was around to help him figure it out--

_Crowley._

That's what was wrong.

He'd grown accustomed to the feeling of the demon in the world--variable based on how close he was, but nearly always there in the back of him. An awareness of that fiery demonic love that he... well, if he was being honest, that he probably paid too much attention to.

Sometimes it went out entirely, generally when Crowley nipped off to hell for check-ins and reports. But whatever this was, it was... oh, it was not that. The fire was banked, and the love, the love had dimmed into sorrow...

He closed his eyes and tried to focus, narrow down a direction. South, was as much as he got. It wasn't much, but it was a place to start off at least. 

Aziraphale packed hurriedly and started heading south.

***

By the time he arrived at Andalucia he barely even needed to close his eyes to feel the pull. Once he got close to Seville he could almost do it during his eye blinks--pulled along like a fish on the line, with the hook set into his heart instead of his mouth.

_Here._ It barely qualified as a tavern, and that only because of the presence of alcohol. So very, very much alcohol.

Most of it seemed to be inside Crowley. The demon was slumped in the corner, glasses askew, surrounded by empty jugs and bottles.

He tried using his voice first, he really did. "Crowley? Crowley!"

Crowley's head raised from the table to look at him blearily. "Zzziraphale!"

"My dear, what have you done to yourself?"

"Got a commendation. Good for me! Hell giv' me one." He somehow managed to come up with a bottle that still had something in it, and gulped it down. "Gotta good boy. Yay me!"

"Crowley, dear boy, I need you to sober up a bit," he said.

"Nnnnno. No no no. Sober bad. Drink w' me?"

Oh, dear. He wasn't going to be able to talk Crowley out of this one, he didn't think.

"Crowley," he said, slowly and clearly. "I need you to sober up, or I will have to try to do it for you."

"Nnnnno!"

Really, he was reminded of nothing so much as one of the more petulant toddlers on board the ark. So he reached out with a touch of power to try to cleanse some of the toxins out of his bloodstream.

"No. Nooo!" Crowley went rigid, resisting him. The bottle in his hand shattered, and Aziraphale immediately stopped trying to sober him up.

"Shhh, shhhhh..." he said, panicked. He was increasingly sure he wasn't going to be able to do this at a distance, regardless of his rules.

So he would have to touch. Not for his own gratification, but his friend was in pain and, if he hadn't caused all of it, he'd certainly added to it. He whipped out his handkerchief.

Crowley was still crying out, shaking and staring at the blood and shards in his hand. He flinched away when Aziraphale reached out. 

"Shh, Crowley, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. Please, my dear, I won't try it again, but _please_ let me see to your hand!" He was trying to speak soothingly, but he was desperately afraid it was coming out as a babble.

Someone grabbed his shoulder from behind and he realized everyone was staring, everyone could _see Crowley's eyes_ in this devil-obsessed place--

"Sleep," he told the man who had grabbed him, putting every ounce of angelic command into it that he could. He glanced around the room at hostile faces. "All of you. Sleep, and forget."

The thud of bodies slumping over tables and falling off chairs was unexpectedly satisfying. He turned back to Crowley--

Oh. Crowley, too, had pitched over, and was now snoring into the table.

Well. That... wasn't his intention at all, really it wasn't. But it might well make things easier, to care for his friend.

Aziraphale sighed, and picked Crowley up to get him somewhere safer and sober him up. 

***

1862

There was a note waiting for him at the bookshop. "St James Park, 11 am tomorrow," scrawled out in Crowley's crabbed and difficult hand. 

It had been a while since he'd seen his demon, but that wasn't as unusual as all that. What was unusual was the method of contact--they had regular meets, and this was distinctly outside them. Something was up, important enough that Crowley wasn't just going to saunter into the bookshop to talk to him.

The next day, Aziraphale dressed with care in his afternoon suit and idly wandered towards the park, toting some leftover bread for the ducks.

Whatever it was that he'd been expecting, it definitely hadn't been what he found--Crowley was nervous, agitated. Upset and paranoid in a way Aziraphale hadn't seen him for millennia, not since before the arrangement.

And even if he had been his usual laid-back self, Aziraphale thought wretchedly, he still couldn't have given him what he wanted. Not that, he thought. Anything but that. Anything but self-annihilation. Anything but a weapon direct from heaven's armory, that could perhaps even hasten Armageddon.

Anything, in fact, but a suicide pill given to someone who already looked ready to use it.

"If they knew I'd been--" and here his imagination failed him, because he could hardly look at his demon in this state and finish with the words 'in love with you.' He couldn't call it adoration, and he couldn't call attention to the arrangement, and he couldn't bear for it to be less than it was.

And so he fell back, back on the word that had been thrown at him all those centuries ago. Back on the word that had been wielded like a knife after Sodom and Gomorrah, because he knew that was what Heaven would call it if they were caught and right now it made him less ill than the thought of his demon dying for good. "--fraternizing," he finished lamely, and knew immediately from Crowley's face that it had been the wrong choice.

"I've got better people than you to _fraternize_ with, angel." The words cut--they were meant to cut, were sliced into the air with no intent other than to draw blood--and they hit their mark. He felt them all the way to the core of him, and he started to bleed.

He barely remembered getting out of there, knew there had been more words exchanged but couldn't remember what they were as he stumbled back to the bookshop. One of his neighbors tried to talk to him as he went in, and the door slammed in their face quite without him actually meaning to.

Aziraphale dropped onto the old couch in the back room of the bookshop. He tossed his hat and coat to the side and, with a sob, let out his wings to wrap around him in the dark afternoon.

It's not as though they hadn't fought before, he thought. He'd give Crowley a few days to calm down, or maybe the demon would appear with some new pastry. But they would get through this.

He wrapped his wings around him tighter. They _would_ get through this. He wasn't going to lose his friend to something as stupid as a squabble.

And if he did, well. Better that than losing his demon to oblivion. They could probably recover from a fight, but if Crowley tried to take his exit into his own hands, Aziraphale really would lose him forever.

***

A few days went by where he half-expected to see his demon saunter in, and then a week. After two weeks he made up his mind to go at least check, increasingly afraid of what Crowley might have done in a fit of pique.

The address was, of course, in the upscale and fashionable part of town; the house he found there just a little overdecorated. His knocks on the door went unanswered.

Finally, his heart warring between wanting to respect Crowley's privacy and needing to know that he was all right, _alive,_ Aziraphale performed the tiniest miracle to disengage the lock. The rooms he found were, of course, up-to-the-minute stylish. They were also cold and empty, the hearth clean and swept. Sheets draped the sparse furniture, looking like ghosts in the dim light.

The rest of the house was the same--clear signs of being set for a long absence, but no sign of how long or when the owner might return. Aziraphale knew that Crowley kept other residences, but not where they might be--he'd never concerned himself too much with them, not when he knew he could get in touch here. Not when Crowley knew just where to find him.

Would Crowley have done something... drastic? It wouldn't have been the first time there was a somewhat dramatic response, but....

Aziraphale sighed. He tried to respect Crowley's privacy, he really did, but this was going to drive him mad in short order if he didn't at least know _something._

Curiously reluctant, he closed his eyes and spread his attention outward, looking for that faint demonic trace.

It was harder than he expected, and his heart picked up in panic before… _there._ He had it, infernal fire and dark, fierce love; no other demon felt anything like. It was muted, and distant, almost swamped in bleak anger, but it didn’t feel like pain so much as his demon in a pet.

Stepping back into his body, Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief that was immediately swallowed in a yawn, and then another. Oh, he realized, so _that’s_ what was making it feel so dimmed. He shook his head to dispel the lingering second-hand sleep that was trying to settle over him. 

It wasn’t the first time Crowley had gone off for a nap, one that was longer and deeper than a human would have been able to survive. Hopefully he’d wake refreshed and more his cheerful self, without any more of these notions of hurting himself.

Aziraphale would just have to live without him for a while. Likely six months, but probably not more than a year or two. And it'd been centuries since the last time they were out of contact for more than a decade.

The important thing was that his demon was safe. Safe, with no holy water around. His heart did a little stutter at the thought of what Crowley might get up to in one of his darker moods if holy water _was_ available. No, a good nap was probably just what was needed, and then there would be no more talk of holy water.

***


	3. 1941

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't until the explosion was actually happening that he remembered the _other_ point of explosions, which is to send everything flying.
> 
> Including--he realized as the ground rippled beneath them--a font full of holy water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter CW for mention/conversation about the Holocaust (although never noted by name), minor dissociation
> 
> Also, because I didn't note this before, Story title is from Queen's One Year of Love, which if you ignore the whole 'omg we only get a year, time is so fleeting' chorus is just a blueprint for pining forever. 
> 
> Also also, this is the first time I've ever managed to actually title a fic with a Queen lyric and I feel obscurely like this should be a milestone of sorts.

He'd known Crowley wouldn't be working with the Nazis, not really. Yes, all right, he hadn't seen the demon in decades, but he couldn't imagine he would have changed that much, especially watching the ridiculous dancing step as he came towards the altar.

But the last few decades had been so difficult--Heaven had increased their surveillance and criticism of his miracle use, and didn't seem inclined to accept "Pardon me, but there's a terrible war on" for an excuse. The world he loved had been trying repeatedly to tear itself apart. And for so long now there had been no lovely demon to brighten his day, to make him laugh and understand when he needed to cry.

All right, and if he was honest with himself, he did enjoy being rescued just a bit.

Crowley had said the actual consecrated ground wasn't actually all that bad, and he'd missed his demon, he'd missed him so much! He'd let himself get pulled into the conversation, not paying enough attention to the dangers.

It wasn't until the explosion was actually happening that he remembered the _other_ point of explosions, which is to send everything flying.

Including--he realized as the ground rippled beneath them--a font full of holy water.

His shield was tuned for the fire, plenty strong enough for the falling masonry. Water, though, water is like air. Water goes where it will, and the water wanted to be _everywhere._

And so everything seemed to slow around them as Aziraphale's head was abruptly full of the peculiar calculus of death. Discorporation for one or both of them would be extremely annoying. His recently-proclaimed terror of the paperwork had been quite real, not least because sometimes he felt that Gabriel was itching to reassign him away from Earth entirely.

Allowing ballistic holy water anywhere near his demon, though....

His protection miracle continued to hold--which he was glad of, it was certainly more convenient that way--but he was suddenly paying much less attention to it and much more towards pulling all of the Holiness out of the water headed directly towards them.

He held it--held as the fire vaporized the water, held as the world burned and fell down around them, his focus narrowed to just holding on--

"Angel," Crowley said softly. He sounded odd, so far away.

Aziraphale cracked an eye open.

"I think you can stop now." A rakish grin graced the demon's face. Well, he looked all right and tight, at least. 

Aziraphale was less sure of himself. Something was ringing and he rather suspected it was him. Yes--he shook his head to clear it and some of the dizzied underwater feeling faded.

"That was very kind of you, my dear," he said, blinking away dust and afterimages.

"Shut up," Crowley said, without heat.

"Well, it was." He cast about for something neutral to say while his heart swelled. "No paperwork, for a start--" and then he remembered. "Oh, the books! Oh, I forgot all the books, they'll be blown to--!"

"Relax," Crowley drawled and reached into the rubble. "A little demonic miracle of my own." He handed over the bag of books, wrenched from the uncaring hand of a dead Nazi, and started picking his way out over the debris.

Aziraphale could barely move. He should, he thought, have been tired after that. Exhausted, even. And yet, it felt like only inertia even held him to the ground.

"Come on," Crowley said, looking back. It was hard to tell if his uneven gait was because of the mess they'd made of the church or if the ground was still hurting him, but he thought his demon might be moving a little bit more easily than he had been.

Hmm. That might explain a few things, too.

The ride back to the bookshop was both welcome and fraught. He very much appreciated not having to walk the entire way in the middle of an air raid, for one thing. And for another, Crowley had a beautiful vehicle, clearly loved--Aziraphale would have happily basked in the feeling of how much love this car had soaked up.

However, it was a little ruined by the new knowledge that his demon drove like an _actual maniac._

With all of the lights off.

In the middle of a bombing.

All in all, given the events of the evening, it would have been more surprising if Aziraphale _wasn't_ shaking by the end of the ride.

He held his books on his lap, gripping the handle of the satchel ever tighter. When Crowley finally slewed to a stop in front of the shop he had to pry his fingers free. "You could--" he started with a squeak, and then cleared his throat. "Won't you come in?" He managed a much more normal tone of voice this time. "I believe... I need a drink."

"Probably shouldn't. Too much attention and all--"

"Please come in," he said quietly. "It's not safe out here."

Crowley tilted his head to look at him, eyes dark behind his sunglasses. Not for the first time, Aziraphale wanted to ask Crowley to take them off when it was just the two of them, but the words stuck in his throat. He'd only just gotten him back, and was already faced with losing him again.

"Yeah, all right," the demon said finally, with a tiny quirk of the lips.

They clambered out of the car, Crowley dropped a pat on the hood that was almost a caress as Aziraphale headed to unlock the shop door.

"She's a very lovely automobile," Aziraphale said over the click of the key.

"Had it almost fifteen years already," Crowley said proudly, pouring love out into the world with one last pat on the perfect paintwork.

Aziraphale's breath caught as it brushed past him, flowed around him in eddies and streams, tugging him, warming him. He's not sure he'd have minded being blown to bits, earlier, so long as he knew too that Crowley had gotten out of his funk and started loving the world again.

He snapped to both turn on the lights and pull down the blackout shutters. This miracle, too, went more easily than he thought it would.

Crowley was coming in behind him. "Be a dear and make sure that shutter is tight?" he said over his shoulder. "It sticks sometimes."

Crowley rattled the shutter as he closed the door. "Aziraphale..."

"Come in and sit down," Aziraphale said again. He came back with a bottle of rather decent wine and two glasses. "I believe the least I can do is offer you a drink, and shelter for the rest of the bombing."

Crowley caught sight of the label and smiled, wariness evaporating. "Angel," he said, surprised. "I never took you for the black market type."

Oh, that smile--that smile was _everything._ Everything he'd missed, so desperately; everything he'd wanted so much to see again. (Everything he'd been afraid, for eighty years, that he'd never be _allowed_ to see again).

"It's only the black market if you didn't buy it when it was first being made," Aziraphale said to him instead of saying any of that. "I got this case from the vineyard long before the current embargoes." He made a show of fiddling with the corkscrew to open it and poured them each a generous measure.

Crowley accepted his gracefully and sank down onto the ancient backroom sofa just as though it hadn't been the best part of a century. He swirled his glass gently and took an approving sip. "Well then, to forethought, I suppose."

Aziraphale took a rather more generous portion of his own, letting it flood his senses and soothe his ragged nerves. He drained his glass in relative silence before approaching his demon.

"Let me see your feet."

Crowley froze mid-sip, then pulled the wine away. "I beg your what?"

His nerves were fluttering again. He hadn't expected to have to ask twice--he'd never expected to even ask once!--and his resolve was threatening to fail him. But he had to know, had to make sure Crowley wasn't suffering anything he could fix.

He still took a moment to refill his glass and drink some back, tipping the bottle toward Crowley in invitation.

The demon shook his head minutely. Aziraphale settled for having one more swig of his own. It was fruity and heavy on his tongue, coating his mouth in the taste of summers past. He took courage from it in the dust and war of the present.

"Your feet." He swallowed. "Let me see them."

"Why would you--"

"Please."

The golden gaze raked over him, through him. He made himself stand steady.

"Yeah, all right," Crowley said at length, tossing back the rest of his wine and bending towards his feet.

He intercepted those long nimble fingers, hitting his knees before the demon. "Let me help."

"Angel, you shouldn't--"

"You were hurt rescuing me," he said. If he was going to do this at all--if he was going to _get_ to do this at all; if he was allowed, just this once, to have a reason to touch--he was determined to do it properly. "Please," he said again. He still had Crowley's hands tucked in his own, watching those eyes for assent.

The moment broke somewhat abruptly, when Crowley let out his breath in a whoosh and sat back, pulling his hands out of Aziraphale's. "Well, sure," he said, all masks back in place. "Don't know what you're worried about though. Really, they're doing much better."

"Then I will waste a little time," Aziraphale said with a smile, "in order to be satisfied, and I'll pay you in wine and shelter."

"Might have to break out another bottle of the good stuff, then." There was a familiar twist there, a cocky smile that almost overrode the wariness of the eyes.

Aziraphale reached for Crowley's shoes as gently as possible, pulling one foot up until it rested on his knee. He ran into a hurdle first thing when there didn't seem to be any way to actually remove the shoes. "Um... dear boy?"

"What n--? Oh, right." Crowley closed his eyes briefly, bent down to run his finger carelessly along his foot.

The foot that rested on Aziraphale's thigh shifted, changing and flowing until it was a much more human appendage. There was a line of scales that ran heavily up from the instep, more that were threaded up around the toes and from the heel around the ankle.

Aziraphale blinked.

"Sorry." Crowley laughed a little, self-consciously. "Thought you knew."

"I... don't think I did," Aziraphale said. He probably sounded slightly stunned, he realized. He'd been expecting a gentle unwrapping and had instead found himself immediately presented with a perfectly reasonable foot. "You really should have worn shoes before venturing onto holy ground," he found himself saying.

"Oh, I like that! I promise, if you give me any advance warning next time you're trying to get yourself _discorporated in a church,_ that I will run off and find shoes."

"See that you do," Aziraphale said. He allowed himself another small smile and then turned his attention to the foot resting on his leg.

Crowley's skin was warm beneath his hand, dusty and unexpectedly smooth aside from the scales. The scales themselves were slightly cool and pebbly, the texture pleasant under his fingers. He lifted gently to get a look at the sole.

There was a sharp intake of breath above him as his fingers curled under the instep. He glanced up. "Am I hurting you?"

Crowley shook his head. "Ticklish."

"Then you're probably not too damaged." Aziraphale worked to keep his voice at 'gentle humor' and not show how much he wanted to hear that sound again, how much he wanted to catalog and file every noise he could pull from his demon. _This was a bad idea,_ he thought, but it was too late now. He turned back to the task at hand.

The skin of Crowley's sole was reddened and tender; the scales dry and ragged. A few blisters were started. And it could have been so much worse. _Walking on hot sand,_ indeed. He shook his head and summoned a basin of clean water and a cloth.

"Angel, really, it's so much better--"

"You shouldn't have to wear half the church." He wet the flannel and squeezed it out one-handed, keeping the other planted on the arch of Crowley's foot in case of rebellion. "This may sting."

"As long as it's not holy water, I'll be fine. I've been through worse."

Aziraphale glanced sharply up, riding the memory of an entire font flying through the air. "Never," he said, more passionately than he quite meant to. "Not near you."

The atmosphere cooled palpably. "Yes," Crowley said. "You've been quite clear."

Stung, Aziraphale bent back to his task, running the cloth up Crowley's ankle and squeezing so the water flowed down over his foot. It ran dark with dust and soot at first, striking against the skin, darkening the cloth of his trousers, but soon he had drawn this out as long as he could. He wondered if he dared risk a small healing miracle, but decided it would likely do more harm than good.

"Let me see your other foot, please."

"Really, angel, I like a good blasphemy as well as the next guy but this isn't--"

"I'm called upon to heal," Aziraphale said calmly. "I'm called upon to care for, to wash the feet of my enemies." _I am called upon to love,_ he thought, and again, always, did not dare to say.

He carefully grasped Crowley's ankle and lifted the foot off his leg, set it down gently on the soft, well-worn rug, and lifted the other foot to his thigh with a firm hand.

More blisters and redness, the scales angry and scraped-looking. He repeated the motions, letting clean water run down the skin to remove dust and soak into his trousers, soft and meditative.

He could go higher, he thought--roll up the legs of that ridiculous suit, clean and touch the calf. Find out how far up those scales twine. He could bend his head and give a kiss to the dear feet that had braved destruction and holy fire for his sake.

He did not do any of those things.

He did allow himself one last indulgence, though. He summoned a balm, an old old recipe he had learned from a woman whose name he had forgotten centuries before. Scooping a tiny bit into his fingers, he smoothed it along the burned sole and rubbed it in with a firm hand.

Crowley was uncharacteristically silent throughout this. Aziraphale resisted the urge to look up again and check his face, instead focusing on making sure both soles were treated with the soothing salve.

"There," he said finally, bereft of any further excuses for touch. "I would heal it for you--"

"Don't!" Crowley said, then continued more calmly, "Probably a bad idea. I honestly expected it to be worse from the church. Guess the bombs blew out all the holiness," he said with a laugh.

Aziraphale echoed the laugh weakly. He didn't know how to answer that, whether to voice his suspicions or just keep quiet-- 

"Get up," Crowley went on, offering him a hand. "You shouldn't be kneeling there to me."

_I would always kneel for you,_ he thought, shocking himself with the strange blasphemy. That was... another thought for later, he told himself sternly, and allowed his demon to help him to his feet.

"Shame I couldn't get some of the water, though." Crowley was almost talking to himself, now, but obviously realized what he'd said when Aziraphale ripped his hand away. "No!"

They stood in shocked silence for a heartbeat, and another.

"You told me what you think, angel, but--"

"It came for you," Aziraphale said, at almost the same time. "The water in the font, the explosion blew it straight toward you. I nearly let it discorporate us both just to keep it _away_ from you, we would survive discorporation but I couldn't... I can't--!"

Crowley was just staring at him, mouth slightly open, eyes still hidden behind those damnable dark glasses. 

"You left. I know I hurt you but you left. For eighty years," Aziraphale said. "I don't-- Please--" Too much, too fast, this was getting too close to things he could not, dare not voice. "...I think I deconsecrated the church," he finished weakly. "I tried to pull out the holiness, and... I think I pulled it all."

Crowley stared at him, still.

"... _say_ something."

"That explains the feet, then."

"...What?"

Crowley's lips quirked in a smile--it was strained, but it was a smile. "Told you. I thought my feet should have been more burned, but... it stopped hurting as much after the bomb." He laughed, a tiny little huff. "You deconsecrated a church."

"I'll go 'round and fix it tomorrow," Aziraphale said faintly. 

"Oh, don't reconsecrate it just for me. I can take credit for that one."

"You can have a week," Aziraphale said after another moment. "If anyone checks after that, it'll be reconsecrated."

"Week's plenty of time." He cocked his head. "Sounds like the bombs have stopped."

The all-clear sirens sounded out as if they'd only been waiting their cue.

"Don't... do anything stupid." _Don't ask me again, please don't ask me again._

"Nah. Got some whiskey at home that's _definitely_ black market, calling my name." The demon did a tiny shift, almost a dance, and Aziraphale glanced down to see that his feet were now shoe-shaped again. "No more Nazi spy rings, angel."

"Oh, I promise. Out of the spying game entirely."

He walked with Crowley to the Bentley, feeling the love that poured off his demon for the humans and the car and the world and this tiny little island fighting off this enormous war. He stood and watched as the car pulled away.

He hoped, oh how he hoped, that it wouldn't be as long again, this time. He'd missed the familiar face, the easy laugh and the wicked tongue. But even more than that he'd missed that feeling--just being near that soft celestial love made everything else easy to bear. 

Aziraphale went back into his bookshop, trying not to think of water flying through the air. 

Trying not to think of kneeling to his demon.

***

He saw Crowley a few more times over the course of the war--a traded blessing or temptation, since the Arrangement was back on; a drink at the shop or wherever they found themselves. It was mostly inconsequential, quiet things. Crowley didn't bring up holy water again and neither did he. 

And then the liberation hit full swing, and the news from the camps began to come in. 

He'd thought he was done wanting to rail at God for the things the humans did, but the things that they had found at the end of the war....

He'd gone out. He'd celebrated. He'd held it all together. And when he couldn't hold it together anymore, he'd retreated into his bookshop--pulled down the blackout curtains and turned the sign to Closed, and finally, _finally_ let himself slump into silence.

He felt his demon before Crowley let himself in, before the ring of the bell or the first perfunctory knock on the door. That familiar dark energy, that love laced with fire, could never have been anybody else.

And yet he couldn't find the energy to pull his head up off of his desk.

"Hallo, angel! Heard the news? Well, of course you've heard the news, it's practically deafening out there and I don't see how you could have _not_ heard the ne--" The bright patter stopped short. "Angel? You all right?"

"I should have stopped it." He spoke into the desk, not sure he was up to a cheerful demon right now. "I should have. I should have stopped it."

Movement, closer now. "You couldn't have fixed this." The chipper tone had vanished under quiet certainty.

"I am Her representative on Earth." His fist clenched, tight enough to hurt. Nimble fingers caught it, pried it open and he clutched on like he was drowning. Maybe he was. His corporation shouldn't have had this much trouble, this weight in his chest.

"You couldn't have fixed this," Crowley said again, stronger.

"I should have stopped it. I should have _known it was going on!"_ He raised his head, finally, looking up with bleary eyes. "Heaven could have sent me, could have told me. _She_ could have told me, why didn't She tell mmmph!"

It had been well over a thousand years since the last time they'd done this. He'd forgotten--

No. His breath caught in his throat, an aching hitch in his too-human lungs. He'd forgotten nothing, not the warmth of his demon's hand, not the sweet sharpness of apples and brimstone (so much less brimstone, now, almost lost, buried until it was more like wood smoke). Not the luminous, almost hypnotic amber of those eyes. He'd shoved the memories down, buried them beneath his heavenly duties, but he'd never forgotten.

"Heaven handing you a beefier miracle budget these days, are they?" Crowley said, deceptively sweetly.

He shook his head, just a small motion that ran no risk of dislodging that hand. There was no wall here to brace against; the contact with Crowley was achingly gentle and--

\--and he was afraid of what he might say, he realized. Afraid of what he had said already. He'd been holding this for months as news trickled in, so much worse every time reports made it home.

And the only one he dared talk to was his dearest enemy, who he hardly needed talk to at all.

"Given you carte blanche to just fix things, have they?" Crowley kept up that quiet, even tone, mockery barely creeping in at the edges. "Gabriel stopped being a prat who only cares about his own power?"

"Mmpff," he said, with another head shake. Definitely neither of those things had happened, although he sometimes... not prayed, that was far too direct, but he definitely _wished_ for them, in the darkness of his own heart.

"Did She tell you anything? Has She started talking to anyone again at all?"

He didn't even bother to shake his head this time. The world fuzzed as tears sprang up in his eyes. Crowley wouldn't miss them, not this close. They were answer enough--he hadn’t seen Her, hadn’t talked to Her. Nobody had, as far as he knew. And He _missed_ Her, so much.

"You couldn't have fixed this," Crowley said, almost like this was, was a _fairy tale_ and the third time made it true. "You can't do everything, especially if Heaven keeps you in the dark."

The pressure on his lips eased, a question in amber eyes. He nodded--he could handle it now, he thought, without giving voice to things he dare not say.

Crowley withdrew his hands now Aziraphale wasn't clutching quite so desperately. "You know what the humans are like," he said as he released the angel's mouth. "There will be stories of Grace, too. Love that risks everything."

_I'm tired of my saving grace being too late to save anything,_ he thought, but did not say. He cleared his throat instead. "In town for a while?"

"Thought I'd stick around a bit, yeah. Nothing else on right now." Crowley grinned. "Tempt you to dinner?"

Aziraphale had not buried himself in his demon tonight, had not taken any more contact than Crowley was ready to give. He had, he decided, had quite enough resisting temptation for now. "Lovely. Wine first? My treat."

Crowley grinned. "Thought you'd never ask. Can't wait till we can get decent wine again."

"Well, dear boy, my cellar is dwindling, but I still have standards." He pushed himself out of his chair and couldn't tell which was creaking more. "Red or white?"

***


	4. 1967

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter CWs for discussion of the AIDS epidemic and, again, minor dissociation. 
> 
> Y'all are awesome. Be awesome, and excellent to one another (and if you live in the US, VOTE!)

1967

The invention of neon lights had quickly painted Soho in a million brilliant, shifting shades. It had been going on for years, and Aziraphale still wasn't entirely certain whether he found it charming or tawdry. Or, he admitted himself, both by turns. Sometimes he found the glow lovely, sometimes just tacky. Occasionally, when he was in a very good mood, it reminded him of the flowers in Eden.

Tonight, as he stood in the shadows with his eyes on a flashy vintage car, they felt like a warning. He only wished he knew exactly who was being warned, or even what of.

Aziraphale flicked his eyes heavenward, imagining that he could see past the street lights and neon reflected in the London fog. "I do wish I knew what You were trying to say," he murmured under his breath. He almost followed it up with, 'I miss the days when You spoke a little more clearly,' but then he remembered some of Her more drastic statements and declined to finish the thought out loud.

He settled instead against a rough damp wall, making himself comfortable to wait as long as he needed. Soho never slept, after all, and if there was a shape pressing itself into his ribs, well, he wasn't going to say anything about that either.

Oh, but it burned--tucked in his coat, nestled in next to his treacherous heart. He shouldn't have done this yet, wouldn't have done it ever except for the thought of how things might have gone wrong. How close they had come to everything going wrong before.

He'd lost Crowley once already, for an interminable 80 years. At the end of that, he'd come close to losing his demon forever. If he'd been less attentive, had a little less power....

And now this, and he'd finally decided that he would rather lose Crowley to his own hand than risk another happenstance, a chance that he might not be there for. Rather than risk another 80-year silence.

He'd been too lost in his own thoughts, not paying enough attention to the world around him. Crowley had emerged--"Oh, my dear, what have you done with your _hair?"_ he murmured--and was talking to a rather earnest young man in the street. There was no way to slip past without being seen, and this was _not_ a conversation for all London.

Aziraphale dithered for a moment and then, sensing his chance, miracled himself directly into the Bentley.

Crowley faced him with surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"I needed a word with you."

"What?" Crowley's attitude said he was unexpected, but not unwelcome. There was that, at least.

"I work in Soho. I hear things." He also kept a small budget for information about the neighborhood with several people on his occasional payroll, but Crowley didn't need to know that. "I hear that you're setting up a... caper to rob a church."

Crowley looked away, as good as a sigh. Or an argument they'd already had.

"Crowley, it's too dangerous." He couldn't help it, he had to make one last appeal, in case... well, in case. "Holy water won't just kill your body. It will destroy you completely."

And there, there was the resignation on Crowley's face. Oh, he _wished_ he could see his eyes! "You told me what you think 105 years ago," Crowley said.

"And I haven't changed my mind." Not a jot, not a tittle. "But I can't have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So--" he pulled his hand out of his coat with its deadly burden, holding it for his demon before he could funk out again--"you can call off the robbery. Don't go unscrewing the cap."

Crowley took the flask gingerly, cradled it like a precious thing. Like it didn't hold his doom. "It's the real thing?"

"The holiest." _I made it myself--crafted the blessing to be strong, to last forever, because the Almighty Herself forbid you should ever ask me for this again. I made my dearest friend a weapon and I did my best work, for you, even if I'm crafting your death._

"After everything you said." He cradled it in strong, slender fingers, with the closest thing to reverence Aziraphale had ever seen. "Should I say thank you?"

"Better not." _Don't thank me, not for this. Don't call any attention, not now._ That warmth, that fire-laced love he always felt around his demon was growing, blooming like a flower, like… like an explosion with a deadly heart. Not this, not _this--_ why should it be this? He'd loved, he'd loved and loved for thousands of years and never asked anything back--

"Well, can I drop you anywhere?" Crowley asked.

Oh, he wanted to--wanted to do anything, everything Crowley wanted, and he wanted to rage against it. It shouldn't have been _this_ that opened up the demon's heart. It shouldn't have been this that made heat rise around him, that stole the breath from his body and made his human heart go into overdrive.

"No, thank you," he managed against the pressure in his chest. "Oh, don't look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could... I don't know." Something, anything for a future, something to look forward to. Some promise that Aziraphale could hold him to. "--Go for a picnic," he suggested. "Dine at the Ritz."

"I'll give you a lift," Crowley said. "Anywhere you want to go."

 _I would have given you anything,_ he thought recklessly, drowning in that sweet tide. _Anything that was mine to give, and it would have been yours. And you asked me for this...._

His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then he stopped trying and allowed himself to touch, just once--for the first time in more than twenty years, for the second time in hundreds. He reached out and pulled Crowley's head towards him, leaned in and placed a very gentle kiss upon his forehead and oh, his heart was breaking, why wasn't it strong enough not to break after all this time? "You go too fast for me, Crowley."

***

He couldn't do this again, he thought, hurrying away from his friend, trying to breathe through the love that surrounded him. He couldn't do this again, not ever. He couldn't afford hope and he couldn't allow himself to touch, not ever, _ever_ again.

He could still feel tingling on his lips.

It was too close, he let himself go entirely too far and his only excuse, should anyone ask, was the staggering increase in ambient love and that was, that was… nobody had better ask, that's all there was to it, because the realization that Crowley had turned all that amazing terrifying love on _him,_ well, that was not a defense that would get either of them in _less_ trouble. If anyone thought to ask, they were already doomed.

He walked back to the bookshop in a daze, panicked by his own actions and still buoyed by the love he could feel behind him. 

Crowley had been so warm under his hand. Under his lips.

He should never have known this. He should never have put himself in this position, he should never have let himself realize what it meant the first time his corporation flooded with warmth for his demon. He should have turned himself in, should have gone home, should have walked away.

He would not trade a single moment. Not even the hard ones. Not even the ones that broke him, that rent a heart that should never have been able to break at all.

He made it blindly into his shop, fumbled the door closed behind him and dropped, slumping against the back of the door as his knees gave out.

 _I am made to love,_ he thought, blinking furiously against tears. _I am charged to protect. I may not have loved wisely, but--_

He dragged his jacket sleeve roughly across his eyes. "I am charged to love," he said aloud. "I am made to protect. And if I am not allowed to protect, and I'm not allowed to love... what am I doing here?" His eyes flicked upwards and then back down, staring into the streetlight-striped darkness of his empty shop. This was not a prayer to Heaven, after all; as for God, if She was anywhere, she was everywhere.

 _If,_ echoed a treacherous thought in his mind. _If_ She was anywhere.

"Why did You build me to love if I am not allowed to love?" he said into the emptiness of the shop. "How am I supposed to protect, if I’m not allowed to protect?"

The neon in the street outside flashed through the windows, shining on the books, leaving him untouched by the light.

The worst part--if there could be said to be a worst part in this, indicating that there might somehow also be a best part--was that even now he could still feel the bubble of Crowley's love, effervescent in the air he breathed, softening the sharp edges of the world around him, slicing him to ribbons.

It's not as though he'd never been loved before. It's not even as though he'd never been desired--living among humans, as a human, for six millennia, well, there were bound to be people who cared. He knew what the simple love of children felt like. He knew the love granted to a hand that helps, a comrade who listens. He was no stranger to the desire and hopeless infatuation that sometimes sprung up, even if it was not requited or encouraged.

He had never felt anything like this.

It was _everywhere,_ so much stronger than even the most ardent human love. It wrapped around him, and he sobbed, trying to catch his breath because he knew now, things he didn't know before, and he didn't know how to deal with them.

Crowley loved him. He'd long hoped that perhaps the demon was at least fond of him but this, this was unmistakable, directed and overpowering. And it was highly unlikely that the seismic shift of feeling currently overwhelming him was happening without Crowley being aware of it.

Heaven wasn't likely to be any less invasive or demanding. So in terms of his life right now, the knowledge that Crowley loved him was... worse than useless, actually. He couldn't act. He wasn't allowed to _touch._ He still couldn't acknowledge his own feelings in any way without risking his own safety.

His own safety, and thereby all his charges’… and also _Crowley's._

"I can't," he breathed, and stuffed his knuckles into his mouth with a whimper. He dared not speak, dared not even _hint_ that he knew.

Dawning horror crept over him. He'd been safe before. However terrified he'd been of Heaven discovering his love--and oh, he had been--he'd been _safe._ He would face reprimand and possibly removal, if found out, but he could, quite accurately, state that he had been called on to Love His Enemy. There would have been no reason for anyone to come after Crowley; indeed, the demon might even have been safer. But now....

Crowley loved. Crowley loved an _angel._ Aziraphale had seen him a few times after ordinary failures, ordinary reprimands--coming back from Hell with scars, or just so tired and surrounded by the taste of pain. Once he'd washed up at the shop late at night with bleeding lips and spiderwebbed lenses, the apple-scent of him almost drowned in the brimstone; obviously more injured than that, but he wouldn’t let Aziraphale tend him any more than the offer of whiskey and a nap on the soft old couch....

What would Hell do to him for this? What would Heaven?

What, for that matter, was _Aziraphale_ going to do?

He realized, slowly, that there was sound within the bookshop, running under the street noise from outside--a whispered litany of "I can't I can't I can't I can't" spilling from his own lips.

He stilled them with some effort, licked them. How long had he been sitting here, wrapped in the endless wheel of his own thoughts?

 _Too long_ was the only answer he had. Too much time, stuck running around that circle; too little answer for the next step. Too much love to think straight. Too little freedom to move.

He had to find some way to ignore it, to push it down, hold it back. 

_He'd given Crowley holy water._

The very idea had felt like betrayal, when Crowley first asked; it felt like betrayal twenty-six years ago when they spoke again and it felt like betrayal tonight, when he handed over an unassuming thermos full of death, and...

What he was contemplating now was so much worse.

But he wanted what he could not have. If it had been only the love, he might be forgiven, but he _wanted._ Heaven was no more likely to forgive him his want than Hell was to forgive Crowley his love.

 _I used to be an angel of faith,_ he thought. His faith in Heaven had grown piebald, worn shiny at the edges from being stretched and run up on the hard corners of life. He had his faith in God herself, and...

Well, and he supposed he had faith in Crowley, as odd as it sounded for an angel to have faith in a demon. But Crowley didn't make him feel small, didn't make him feel wretched. Crowley never cast his inadequacies in his face--or at least not often, and not unprovoked.

And yet... didn't faith in God necessitate faith in Heaven? If he was to trust Her, trust Her will and plan, didn't he also need to trust Her Voice? Her Messenger, her Warrior?

If this was the burden he was to bear, it must be the burden She _meant_ him to bear, he reasoned. It must be part of the plan, or else what was the plan for?

And if this was indeed the burden he was supposed to bear, the task set in front of him on this world, he was... he was _damned_ if he would let it destroy Crowley. It was unconscionable, unthinkable to allow that much love to be taken from the Earth.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and set about trying to make this small enough to carry.

***

He was awakened by the singular experience of having the wall behind him leap up to hit him.

He blinked groggily, pulled back into his body by the shock, and realized he was still sitting just inside the book shop door, which someone was trying very hard to open despite him being in the way. 

"Bless it, angel, you better be alive in there," a voice muttered from the other side, followed by pounding and another kick. _"Aziraphale!"_

"Just--!" he squeaked, and cleared his throat. "Just a moment!" He managed a little better the second time, although his lips cracked and his throat still felt like a rusty gate.

"Open the damn door, angel. And while you're at it, answer your damn phone when I'm trying to call you." Crowley tumbled into the shop with the door as soon as it was free to open. "What happened to you? I've been calling. Didn't think you'd left London, but--"

"I'm... quite alright, my dear. I think." He was stiff, still trying to unbend from his inadvertent nap, to orient himself properly. "I must apologize, I didn't hear the ring."

Crowley looked at him flatly. "You didn't hear your telephone ring."

"Indeed, yes. Dreadfully sorry." He finally got his corporation standing up straight with a faintly audible 'crack'.

"It's been two days. Two days since I started calling, not counting--how long were you sitting there?"

Oh, now there was an unfortunate question. "Ah. Um... What day is it?"

"Tuesday."

"Ah. Yes, quite. And, and I brought you the, ah...?"

"... thermos?" Apparently Crowley also still didn't want to say it out loud. Probably for the best.

"Yes. I brought you that on...?"

"Thursday. That was Thursday. Are you really telling me you've been sitting here the best part of a _week--!"_

"Erm... Yes?" No wonder he was stiff, really. He was very fond of his old corporation, he really was, but he had years and miles behind him and they really weren't meant to last anything like this long. And besides, well, it had been a very tiring few years, what with the humans constantly trying to blow themselves up, and also he _had_ just been attempting something quite tricky on himself without any blueprints. After Crowley's eighty-year nap he didn't feel like it was entirely fair to be fussed at for four days.

"--seriously can't just do that, angel, and are you even listening to me?" Crowley was saying.

Aziraphale blinked. "I'm terribly sorry, my dear, I'm still a touch groggy. What were you saying?"

"I said," Crowley ground out with aggressive patience, "you can't just hand me holy water after 105 years and then up and disappear on me! Something could have happened to you! Anything could have-- _Heaven_ could have happened to you!"

"Nonsense, my dear. I'm--" he broke off for a moment, taking a quick stock of himself. It could have gone badly, so badly, but he thought it was all right, really. He would have to test it more later, but he could function at least. Crowley's presence didn't make it more than usually hard for him to think-- "I'm quite alright," he finished, a touch uncertainly. 

It was all still there, all of it, if he looked for it. He could feel the demon's love. But it wasn't overwhelming, and if he wasn't looking for it he could almost ignore it entirely.

"You being all right is not the issue," Crowley grated. "You can't just tell me you're afraid of Heaven and then swan off for a week!"

"Really, my dear--"

"No, there is no 'really my dear' here. You make me check in with you after dealing with Hell, you answer your fucking phone after you tell me you're afraid of Heaven."

Aziraphale started to protest again, but realized before any sounds left his mouth that it was more for the look of the thing than anything, and he was abruptly too weary to continue fighting for the sake of fighting. 

"You're quite right," he said instead, pinching the bridge of his nose and blinking rapidly. "If I require check-ins from you--and I do--it is perfectly reasonable for you to ask the same of me."

Crowley had clearly been expecting more of a fight, although he covered fairly well. "Damn right," he said. "You saved me from Heaven, more than once. If we don't save each other, if we don't look out for each other, it's not an arrangement at all. It's just you, with your superhero complex."

Aziraphale finally gathered himself enough to offer coffee ("It's half ten at night, angel," Crowley said flatly) and then turn it into an offer of wine, which Crowley gladly accepted.

They were able to talk, not quite like before. He still didn't touch, and Crowley was clearly more aware of the casual brush of hand or fingers that would happen as they passed the wine and was more careful to avoid them.

It was the first time in decades that Crowley had come to drink in the back of the shop and left his sunglasses on. Aziraphale missed his eyes, but it was probably for the best.

***

It was quite late (but earlier than it might have been, earlier than other times they'd met for drinks in the back room) when Crowley wandered home with mumbled apologies. Aziraphale merely said, "of course, dear, do be careful," as the demon swayed towards the door, and felt out into the world until he caught the edge of an infernal miracle outside--Crowley sobering up enough to drive without risking his lovely automobile.

And then he sat there, quietly, in the worn wingback chair that had long since molded itself to this corporation. He finished the bottle, letting his mind drift on a comfortable sea of alcohol and fatigue.

Eventually he reached a fuzzy place where he could slip a little deeper and actually look at what he'd done to himself. He remembered being frantic to find some way to contain it, make it all less urgent. Some way to keep it, without harming Crowley or betraying himself.

What he found now when he looked was almost like a wall or a bubble. He could see it best out of the corner of his eye; he had designed it to not be very noticeable. It was perhaps only in his imagination that it pulsed gently, wrapped around a well of love he couldn't quite reach.

It all but disappeared when he took his attention off of it. He snapped back into his body and found he was blinking back tears.

He missed it, that overwhelming sense of love, even though he'd only gotten a bare taste of it. He prodded its absence once, locked behind that wall... 

The worst part, he thought, is that it didn't actually hurt at all.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and decided against sobering up before he let himself drift off.

***

1983

Aziraphale heard the bell ring for the shop door, but ignored it in favor of the distraught man in front of him. Marty was in the middle of a full-on breakdown and no wonder; friends and neighbors had been falling and now his husband Peter--not even allowed to be full husband, never allowed that, not by the government or hospitals or the people who told them they _deserved_ their deaths--now Peter was sick as well and it was only a matter of time and a sour-faced nurse had run him through treatments and procedures for keeping him at home and it was all so much, he couldn’t handle this, he’d do everything, _everything,_ but the look on the nurse’s face had said it all, hadn’t it--

And so when Crowley came around the corner of the stacks, Aziraphale was standing with his arms around a sobbing man, tears and make-up smeared on his best waistcoat. 

The demon froze for just a moment--the tiniest inhuman stillness as he took in the sight--and Aziraphale flicked his eyes off toward the back room, _wait for me there._

Crowley nodded, once, face set in stone behind his sunglasses, and crept soundlessly past.

It took some more time to get the poor boy sorted--inasmuch as anyone could _sort_ this, Aziraphale thought hollowly--but eventually the sobs dried to sniffles and Marty stammered out an apology for ruining his waistcoat.

"Think nothing of it, dear boy," he said, "my cleaners can work miracles." He pretended not to hear the snort from the back room. "I believe in you, and in Peter. Go take care of him, and yourself, and I'll pop round soon to see how you're doing, if that's alright?"

"I'd… I think he'd like that. Thank you, don't know what we're going to do and it’d be so much worse without you--"

"Tosh and nonsense, dear boy. I'm--" his voice broke just a little, and he hurried on-- "I'm not doing anything that anyone else couldn't do, I'm just here to do it."

"Being here--not looking at us like we're dirty, like we deserve this--that's everything, that is, especially right now."

"Oh, it really isn't," he said.

"And be careful," Marty went on. "You be safe with that'n back there, you've told all of us often enough--"

Oh. "I didn't think you'd seen him." He felt frozen through for a moment, then shook himself and pushed a shaky smile forward. "We're-- we aren't… it's not like that."

"Sure it's not." Marty dashed water from the corner of his eyes. "Seen the way you look at him. He at you."

He took a breath, and another, to steady himself. "He's a… a colleague. It's quite complex, I'm afraid."

That earned him a huff of laughter. Pained and strained, but still a laugh. "Isn't it always?"

He saw Marty out and made quite sure the door was locked, sign flipped to 'closed', before stepping into the back room.

Crowley faced him with raised eyebrows, and oh, he did wish they could do this without the sunglasses. "Colleague?" Crowley said, teasing.

"Unless you have a better word? As I noted, it's complex." He slumped into his wing chair.

"It's not complex, angel," Crowley said. "It's very simple."

"Perhaps. If you don't have to begin with, 'angels are real and I am one of them, I could heal your husband in a moment if I weren't strictly forbidden and oh, that's right, even my blessings are currently restricted.'"

Crowley sucked in air through his teeth. "Ouch."

Aziraphale dropped his head back against the worn padding. "As I said. Complex. And that's well before I ever get anywhere near _you,_ my dear." He waved a hand wearily in the air, let his eyes drift closed. "Complex."

"So when you told him it really wasn't everything, you weren't doing anything that anyone else couldn't do…"

"Strictly the truth. Had rather a row with Gabriel about it, actually."

There was silence for a moment, then, "Well, I think then the only question is, wine or Scotch?"

 _"Scotch,"_ Aziraphale said, with feeling. He waved again, in the general direction of the liquor cabinet. "Don't feel as though you have to choose something good, tonight. Anything that tastes like sucking on a peat bog will be perfectly appropriate."

Footsteps, the rattle of glass… he listened with some amusement to the demon's small vocalizations as he poked through the options on offer. It was comforting, for all it also gave him too much time to think.

He wanted… well, he wanted the easy familiarity back, that would let him speak his sins aloud--

No. That would let him _not have to_ speak his sins aloud.

 _Oh, my dearest,_ he thought, deep in the darkness behind his eyes. _I should have been better to you. I should never have made you my scapegoat, to carry away my sins. I should send you away right now, before I’m tempted, again, to make you the repository of my fears; before I can betray you to Heaven or Hell, they must be watching, Gabriel keeps just popping in for little things and I just know he’s reminding me--_

The cool smoothness of a cut-glass tumbler was pressed into his hand, the texture surprisingly real and grounding under his fingertips. He opened his eyes to see Crowley quirk an eyebrow at him before sprawling back out on the ancient sofa cradling his own drink. 

Aziraphale automatically pulled the glass to his mouth for a sip--

\--and gasped, choking. “Good lord, that’s awful!”

“You asked for a peat bog,” Crowley said mildly. Aziraphale looked over and the villain was actually _grinning._

“I did indeed, but this is… did I _own_ this?”

“I may have cheated a little. You’ve never stocked bad liquor, angel, and you know it. Even when ‘awful’ was the best you could get, you had the very best awful around.” Crowley managed a deeper sprawl, throwing one leg off to the side and knocking back a gulp with obvious appreciation.

“I take it you’re not drinking the same.”

“I don’t see any reason for both of us to go blind drinking rotgut, so no.”

Fortified and warned now, Aziraphale returned to his glass, taking a deeper sip without coughing. It was harsh against his palate and burning in his throat; it tasted of smokey peat fires and clay jugs and the smell of curing skins, of winter and woad and woods. 

It was perfect. 

He had closed his eyes again while he let it roll along his tongue, pretending to an earlier time, when men such as poor Marty and Peter might have found acceptance and care in their communities, not, not tossed to the edges and condemned for finding love--

“What’re you thinking, angel?” Crowley’s voice was soft and whisky-roughened.

I’m thinking that… these are the people I wanted to protect, he thought. I have stood for them and cared for them, I’ve helped them through and out and away. I’ve sat with them and patched them up and talked to them and I can do so much, so much, and I’m forbidden to help and-- 

“ _Blast_ Gabriel,” he said out loud. 

“Oi, watch it.”

“Truly, though. I don't, I don't understand why it is that Heaven goes through fits against people whose only crime is loving someone they’re told not to love. It hasn't always been a problem, there are times nobody cares, but...”

“But it is right now,” Crowley said, not unkindly.

Aziraphale inclined his head--not quite a nod, just acknowledgement. “Right now, it is. And right now, instead of choosing love, instead of standing for those who need protection, Heaven has chosen to make them scapegoats. Again.”

“It won't last forever. It never does.”

“I'm afraid that's scant comfort for Marty and Peter.”

“You're doing what you can for them.”

“It's not enough! I just.... Gabriel seems to think it's good PR. And I'm not, I'm not allowed--” 

“Careful, angel.” Crowley didn’t move, this time; didn’t come close as he might have in the past. There was no touch tonight, no whispered absolution, no warm hand against his mouth.

Aziraphale’s heart ached. And his hand, he realized; he was clenching it into a fist, and made himself breathe and relax it.

He looked down at his empty tumbler. “I'm not drunk enough for this.” His voice was quiet. He dared not stumble into letting all of his questions fall from his lips--not now, not here. Not with Crowley so close. He had not forgotten that he was not allowed to touch. And seeing so many condemned for loving _wrongly_....

His glass was refilled with vastly better whisky, which Crowley had fetched for the both of them. He couldn't be bothered to ask for more miracled swill, no matter how much he felt like punishing himself. So they talked, skirting around topics that were too raw, until at length Crowley took himself off home.

And in the morning, Aziraphale got up out of his chair. He wrapped himself in optimism and cheer, and he started his rounds of the Soho sick and dying.

***


	5. 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wanted to be brave. He did, very much. He reached for Crowley’s hand, and stopped. "My dear..." Aziraphale said. "May I?"
> 
> And how, _how_ was Crowley ever able to lie to Hell? How had they not been caught and destroyed a thousand times over, with the softness of his heart right there on his face for anyone to see?
> 
> "You never had to ask," Crowley said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right, y'all, it's been a long 6000 years but this is where some fluff finally kicks in.

2019 

“I don’t think my side would like that very much.” It was automatic, the deflection, before he could truly think things through, and Crowley’s face….

Oh, Crowley's face--that soft, careful expression, the unaccustomed tenderness of his voice. “You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do.”

Heaven was not his side.

Heaven was not _on_ his side.

He felt a crack, then, in his sense of self, in that wall that he had built up that he could almost, almost forget was there sometimes.

 _Heaven was not on his side._ He struggled to remember a point, any point in time, actually, when he had felt that they believed in him. When he had known, without a doubt, that Heaven would stand for him rather than always automatically assuming that he stood for Heaven. He struggled, for that matter, to think of a time when Heaven's assumption that he stood for it was treated as a blessing, rather than an embarrassment. 

Perhaps it followed that he was no longer on Heaven's side, either.

The bus had arrived--labeled for Oxford, bound for London. He wasn't sure whether it was Crowley's miracle or just the world asserting itself into what they expected of it again. But as Crowley sat down, Aziraphale paused just briefly at the seat in front where he usually would have sat down--an infinitesimal hesitation before steeling himself and settling in the seat next to his demon.

They didn't speak for a while. Crowley was clearly exhausted; Aziraphale himself was still pondering what it meant to be on ‘our side.’

The wall he had so carefully built and shored up--had hidden behind for decades--trembled alarmingly, riddled with cracks.

He wanted to be brave. He did, very much. He reached for Crowley’s hand, and stopped.

Tired as he was, it took a moment for Crowley to notice. "Angel?" he said, looking at the hand hovering inches from his own.

"My dear..." Aziraphale said. "May I?"

And how, _how_ was Crowley ever able to lie to Hell? How had they not been caught and destroyed a thousand times over, with the softness of his heart right there on his face for anyone to see?

"You never had to ask," Crowley said.

Aziraphale huffed a laugh. "No, that's... exactly backwards. _You_ never had to ask. But I find I very much do." His traitor hand was still hovering, unable to cover the last two inches. "I'm not supposed to want this."

Crowley's hand turned palm-up and moved to grasp his own.

He was filthy, sooty and sweaty (and warm and comforting). He smelled of smoke, of burned paper and burned rubber and burnt leather (he smelled of apples. Try as he might, Aziraphale couldn't detect a hint of brimstone).

He was perfect.

The wall trembled and broke.

It hit like a dust storm at first, or the first whiteout blizzard he'd ever been in. Fuzzing at the edges that very quickly overtook everything, blocking out the world. It rolled over him in waves until he could barely tell which way was up, pressing in, driving the breath from his lungs. It was terrifying, all the things he denied himself, all the things he never dared let himself taste.

And it was exhilarating, amazing. He could have been thrown into the air and never noticed--how do you tell the difference between flying and falling? It's a matter of perspective, of which way you're pointing and whether anyone is there to catch you.

He trusted Crowley to catch him. Would have trusted him anyway, anytime over the last five thousand years. Crowley had been there for him continuously. But now...

Crowley would catch him, had caught him, was catching him even now--a story told in looks and lifetimes, in half-truths and whole lies. He'd never felt love like this, not even in Heaven--

Aziraphale went cold. He had never felt love like this. Not even in Heaven.

His dizzying spin turned almost sickening. Flying was starting to feel a lot like falling.

_Heaven didn't love him._

Heaven was supposed to love, and Heaven didn't love him. He had never felt even a pale imitation of this love, not from Heaven. Not even in Heaven, really, except...

Except he still remembered the feeling of being in Her presence. He still remembered--how could he possibly forget!--the feeling of being with Her, the focus of Her attention even for just a moment while the grace within him resonated with its source, singing until he would burst from the joy of it. 

He had held onto the memory for so long, had worried it thin until the stitching was coming loose and it wasn't really like the memory at all.

He'd convinced himself that Heaven loved him, and it was only because they weren't as strong as the Almighty that it didn't feel the same. (But this, this was love, this was love for him and for the world and he could live on this forever--)

Heaven had never loved him. Heaven had never loved him but he had loved them, and he wasn't even sure if any of them had ever realized it. If any of them could feel his love, if any of them could feel any love at all.

"Angel." Someone was calling him from quite far away. It had to be Crowley, Crowley was the only one who ever called him angel, none of the other angels ever seems to think he was worthy to be one of them--

"Angel, come on."

Oh, he sounded worried, poor, dear demon, but this was important, he needed to figure this out, how they'd got things so _wrong--_

**Aziraphale. My Guardian.**

That deafening Voice was _not_ Crowley, not at all. He quailed before Her. "My Lord?" (He'd forgotten after all, what it was to be in Her presence; no mere memory could possibly live up to this.)

 **Go home,** She said. And She gave him a push.

He landed back on the bus, clinging to an increasingly distraught Crowley muttering, "Angel, don't do this to me, come on back. The bus driver is looking at us funny and we're still an hour from London."

He was leaned into Crowley's shoulder, still gripping his hand quite hard. His other hand was clenched in Crowley's filthy jacket.

 _Home,_ he thought, and looked up at his demon.

 _"Aziraphale,"_ Crowley said, worry and relief warring in his voice.

"You love me!" Aziraphale said. It wasn't what he meant to say at all. But he could still feel it; it was almost all he could feel. It was quite difficult to think of anything else.

Crowley went very still. "Now?" he said after a moment. "You want to do this now? You couldn't have waited another hour?"

"I love you, too. I did even when I was saying things I didn't mean, except I think I did mean them, except I very much didn't mean them but I didn't know how to fix it so you could be safe and I wanted, oh, I _wanted_ it all to stop because someone cared, because someone else wanted it to stop--"

"Aziraphale," Crowley said tightly. "You're not making sense. Are you okay?"

"She sent me home."

Crowley's hand, the one he wasn't clutching tightly to, came up to the side of his face. He found himself leaning into it as Crowley said, "Are you hallucinating? I'm pretty sure you have to tell me if you're hallucinating."

"That's the police, dear, and only in those dreadful American shows you're so fond of. And I'm not hallucinating, I saw Her. Just briefly, before she sent me home. Back to you!" He couldn't quite help the smile he felt blooming across his face. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to. 

"Okay, if--IF--you saw Her, and I'm not saying you did because I don't think anybody has heard from Her in a very long time, and if She sent you home, it doesn't actually follow that I'm any part of it. Since this is where your body was and all."

"Oh, possibly. I suppose it's possible that she only sent me home to here because Heaven isn't my home anymore. They haven't been for a long time, it's been on Earth. But you're missing a very important part of that."

"What's that, then?"

He hadn't stopped smiling--couldn't stop, really. "Home is where the heart is."

"You are soppy and insane."

"Guilty. May I please take off your wretched sunglasses?"

"No chance. We're still on the bus."

"Nobody is looking at us, though."

"Yes, and it's taking a bit of concentration already. And I'm not entirely convinced you're not hallucinating."

"When we get back to yours, then? I do so love your eyes."

"Now I definitely know you're hallucinating." Crowley slid back in the seat with a grumble, but did not untangle his hand from Aziraphale's.

A few miles went by in silence. He appreciated very much that Crowley hadn't pulled away or made him sit up; he still felt quite wobbly. 

He had, after all, been discorporated, recorporated, possessed a very nice medium and part-time disciplinarian, had flown two humans and a scooter across a fair chunk of England and a flaming M25, been pulled out of time entirely, attempted to face down Satan, and as if that weren't enough he had nearly drowned in the ambient love. Seeing the Almighty face-to-face after 6,000 years was almost an afterthought on the day he'd had.

Oh, and he'd been denying himself this touch for thousands of years out of fear of Heaven. Frankly, he felt he rather deserved the chance at this... cuddle, for lack of a better word.

He was still who he was, though. And part of that was not being able to leave well enough alone.

"Why do you think I couldn't love your eyes?" he said eventually, once he’d worked his way through everything to be able to focus on that.

Crowley shrugged, a little half-hitch of the shoulder Aziraphale wasn't currently glued to. "Demonic, aren't they? Bestial."

"Beautiful," he said. "I've always liked them."

"You're daft, though," Crowley said without heat. "According to you, you love me."

"You made quite an impression. You were a very handsome snake."

"Oh, never tell me you're saying you loved me that far back."

"What, Eden? Nnnnno, I don't think so. I found you fascinating, though. And beautiful."

"See? Daft as a brush."

Somewhere in all this Crowley's arm had crept around his shoulders. It was heart-stopping and terrifying and _right._

"I was so afraid," he said quietly. "So afraid of what they might do to you. I was beastly to you and I shouldn't have been."

"You..." The arm tightened a little around his shoulders. "You were maybe a little beastly, yeah."

He sat with that for a little. He wanted to explain himself, he wanted to beg forgiveness. He would, someday when he felt the words would come, attempt to apologize properly.

For now, though, he sat quietly, swimming in the unaccustomed feeling of being able to touch and be touched.

Crowley's shoulder was warm under his cheek, deeply comforting even if a little too charred-smelling. The demon's arm around his shoulders argued that perhaps begging for forgiveness was redundant.

After more miles had gone by in silence, he also considered that there was possibly nobody in the entire world who more understood what he was going through than Crowley.

They crossed the M25 coming into London and it wasn't even the least bit on fire.

"You didn't sound surprised," he said suddenly.

"Not sure I've got any surprises left in me, today. What was supposed to be shocking?"

"Well, I believe I just confessed my love on the Oxford bus," Aziraphale said.

"Sure you didn't hallucinate that?"

"I don't think so. Am I hallucinating my little cuddle on the Oxford bus?"

"Oi. Demons don't cuddle. We're well known for it."

"What's this, then?"

"This is me quite sensibly restraining a rogue angel, keeping him under my watchful eye in case he starts doing good deeds or something."

"Oh, foul fiend," Aziraphale said dryly. "I am entirely at your mercy. Woe is me."

Crowley's breath hitched, his chest jumping in a chuckle.

"You weren't, though, were you? Surprised, I mean."

'Not really. I think I knew? Or, I didn't know. But I thought sometimes, maybe."

Aziraphale thought about the tone of voice there. "Hoped," he said quietly.

"Maybe. Once or twice."

The bus rumbled closer to Mayfair.

"You?" Crowley said. 

"Me what?"

"You knew. You told me, straight up. When did you know?"

"Oh. That." Aziraphale chuckled a little. He hadn't been expecting to answer this today. "...1967."

"1967? What, with the--Oi, that's not fair! That's when _I_ knew!"

"That's rather the point, my dear. I could, um, feel you."

"What, just wake up one morning and poke the world to see whether your demon's in love with you?"

"Oh, not like that. Not at all. I told you, in Tadfield. I'm an angel. I can feel love." He laughed again and pressed himself tighter into Crowley's shoulder, feeling a little unmoored.

"So I'm just a giant walking neon sign to you, that it? Demon, 6000 years old, desperately in love with his best friend?"

"It did take a bit of work to be able to not notice," Aziraphale said sheepishly.

"Dunno if I should be relieved or mortified," Crowley said. "Fifty years. Fifty _years._ You'd think you might’ve said something!"

At that, Aziraphale sat up to face his demon fully. "And what could I have done? Other than get us both killed? Or perhaps, I suppose, only you. If I was fantastically unlucky."

"I... Hmm." Crowley watched out the window for a bit, refusing to meet his eyes until they were almost to the flat. "Come on. We've got plans to plot. Plots to plan. Pots to plant, maybe, whatever, I’m exhausted and I absolutely need alcohol."

The wine at the Tadfield bus stop had been far too long ago, and not nearly enough of it, either. Alcohol sounded grand. "After you, dear boy."

Crowley kept hold of his hand all the way upstairs.

The flat was spare and dark, much as he remembered Crowley's lodgings being throughout history. It also contained an excellent wine and spirits selection which Crowley dragged him directly to, only releasing his hand in order to pull out tumblers and pour.

"What's tonight's poison, then?" he asked, watching the line of Crowley's throat as the demon tossed back at least three fingers.

"Bourbon," Crowley said, his throat roughened by the alcohol. "You'll like it. Picked up the taste a few years back." He tipped it up once more to catch any stray drops he might have missed. "And don't say poison, we haven't survived this yet."

Aziraphale felt his lips curl into a wry smile and tilted his glass in acknowledgement. 

The bourbon was smooth, flavor blooming on his tongue. He was torn. Good whiskey deserved better treatment than Crowley was giving it, and yet he felt the same urge himself to send it down without letting it touch the sides.

He settled for a large gulp first and then a bit of savoring. "We haven't, no," he said. "I'm not entirely certain we will. Although it's possible Agnes will still be of some help there."

"If we can figure out what she means, you mean."

"I have a thought or two. You're not going to like it."

"Oh, I already don't like it. And just so we're clear, there's none of this self-sacrificing stuff, okay? I'm not built for it." He refilled his glass, and then Aziraphale's when it was held out to him.

"That may be a little difficult," Aziraphale said. He watched the long muscles in Crowley’s throat working as a second tumbler's worth of alcohol disappeared. "Oughtn’t you to slow down just a bit?"

"Oi, mister 'I have standards,' it's only down to you that I haven't had half of it straight from the bottle." Crowley poured some more. "Fifty years," he said, and raised his glass. "Fifty fucking years and you didn't say anything, and you knew the whole time."

"And--" His voice cracked and he took a sip for courage. "And if I had spoken, what would you have done?"

"Well for starters,” Crowley said, slipping out of his singed jacket and tossing it in the corner, “I'd have shoved you into a wall and snogged you."

Aziraphale choked on a perfectly innocent sip of whiskey. And then he tried to pretend that choking on a perfectly innocent sip of whiskey was the only reason heat was rising to his cheeks.

Crowley was watching him with every indication of not having been fooled a bit. "Y’okay there, angel?"

"Quite," Aziraphale said.

Based on the hint of a smile hovering on Crowley's lips, he didn't think his ruse was worth much. 

"The point is, the _point_ is," Crowley said, and stopped. "What's the point? The point is you knew, and you knew that I knew, but I didn't get to know that you knew that I knew that you knew that I how do you even stop that sentence?"

"Crowley?" Aziraphale said. He licked his lips.

"Yeah?"

"I love you. I have loved you since... Since I walked in on you singing to a gaggle of terrified children in the dark and the rain."

"Wait, that long?"

"And I think, no I'm _sure_ that you love me," he went on, as though Crowley hadn't spoken.

"Uh, yeah, we just did this--"

"And you should definitely shove me up against the wall and snog me."

“Well we _what?!”_ were the only words that Crowley managed before his body caught up, and apparently the demon was still fast on the uptake even after bourbon and bus and fire and flame. Aziraphale found himself quite abruptly pushed back into the wall by the bar, crowded against it by Crowley’s warm, lean body pressing into him, glorious and alive and familiar even after all this time.

Except it wasn’t his hand pressing into Aziraphale’s mouth, it was his lips, soft and mobile and faintly stubbled, so much different than his hand had ever been. Aziraphale gasped into his mouth--

 _Oh._ That was… that was definitely the right move. Crowley made a delicious little growl and brought up a hand, grabbing his jaw and shifting his head and _yes, please,_ this was a better angle entirely. He darted out his tongue to take just a taste. He’d always wondered how Crowley would taste and there was bourbon and smoke and apples, even here (no brimstone, none at all).

He smiled into the kiss and was rewarded with another growl. Crowley followed up with his own tongue, slipping between Aziraphale’s lips, questioning and answering and _taking,_ and there were fingers sliding up into his hair and he was lost, lost. He would never be Heaven’s again, not now, not now that he had let himself open to this dizzying love that Crowley poured into him. Not now he knew what it was like to feel this touch on his humanish body. 

His head thumped back into the wall, barely cushioned by Crowley’s fingers in his hair. He felt as though he might simply float away if not for the pressure of the wall at his back, the body on his body. 

Crowley pulled back, visibly tightening his self-control. “Angel? You okay? Did I--?”

“I think I could pour all my sins into your mouth, and they would be made holy,” Aziraphale’s lips said, with absolutely no input from his brain.

Crowley staggered, pitching into him and levering himself back with a hand propped on the wall. He smacked his lips once or twice and traced them with a thin pink tongue. “Well,” he said at length, sounding broken and dazed. “That’s… unexpected.”

“I’m so sorry, my dearest, I should never have--”

“Don’t-- Ha! Do NOT apologize. I might ask you to say it again sometime. And again, maybe.”

“You… liked that?”

“Liked,” Crowley echoed, and dropped his head to rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder with a hollow laugh. “Yeah, sure. That’s a word.”

He had Crowley's head on his shoulder; Crowley's hand still cradled the back of his head. And yet his own hands hovered over the demon's back, fluttering but still not quite making contact.

"Crowley?" he said.

"What is it, angel?"

" _Will_ you take off these wretched sunglasses? I'm quite prepared to beg if I have to."

"It's kinda for your benefit--"

"No!" That came out harsher than he meant, but he continued on. "Not for my benefit, never for my benefit!"

Crowley's head whipped up. "Aziraphale?"

"My dear," he said, more calmly this time. "You may wear them if you want them. You may wear them because you think they look 'cool', and you may wear them around the humans. I understand. But you are _not_ to wear them for me. You have never had to hide your eyes from me, and you never will."

Crowley continued to stare. Well, presumably he continued to stare. As he was still wearing his sunglasses, Aziraphale couldn't even be sure of that.

"Right now," Aziraphale said, forcing his voice to be gentle. "When I can finally tell you I love you... I'm drunk just on the feel of you, and I still can't _touch_ you--" his voice broke, and he gulped a frantic breath-- "and I would very much like to see your eyes."

Crowley took his hand off the wall, slowly, and pulled off his sunglasses. "You can touch me," he said, and his eyes were wide, molten gold from edge to edge, luminous and lovely. "Really. You can."

"I, I can't! I want to, but--" His stupid hands fluttered uselessly through the air behind Crowley. "I'm not allowed to touch."

"You can." There was a clatter as sunglasses hit the floor and then Crowley was pulling back, pulling away, and Aziraphale nearly sobbed with the loss of contact.

It was short-lived, at least--Crowley stepped back to catch Aziraphale's hands in his own, holding them tightly for a heartbeat before settling them on either side of his waist. "You can touch."

Aziraphale's breath caught, hands squeezing into lean muscle before he thought. 

Crowley made a strangled, throaty noise, and he let go quickly. "Oh, I'm so sorry, was that too tight?"

"It's fine. You won't break me." Crowley smiled at him, covered his hands and put them back where they'd been. "You can touch, you can squeeze, you can move."

He was standing in Crowley's flat with two hands full of demon and an open invitation to touch, and it already rivaled his wildest fantasies. If he didn't know better, he could have called this heaven; as it was he squeezed again, carefully, then slid his hands up Crowley's sides and around his back. 

Crowley shivered deliciously under his fingers, pressing that body into him again and just, just _devouring_ his mouth. The love poured out into him, through him, crested and broke and crested again but never faltered. He felt endless and infinite; he could hold this love forever and he might burst of it and never be sated.

His lips found Crowley's rhythm, parting and closing more smoothly now in echo of that crashing emotion. It pulled a needy whine out of his throat.

Crowley pulled away.

"Fine!" Aziraphale said, before he could be asked if this was okay. "Starving!"

"Right," Crowley said, a little breathless. "Ri... right. Long day, you must be hungry." He made to separate.

Aziraphale held fast, hands pressed into the muscles of the demon's back. "Not food. You. Just you."

"Not food? You okay, angel?"

His heart leapt and clenched at the teasing smile Crowley wore. "Food would be lovely. Later. What I need, what I _need..."_ He looked up into those molten eyes and tried to put just a small fraction of the evening's epiphanies into words. "I can feel love, you know."

"You mentioned. In passing."

"It's not... I don't just feel it. I was built for it. To protect, and to love. And I think--no, I _know,"_ he said, raising his voice a little when Crowley opened his mouth to speak, "I know now I need it. I can't just keep going, giving love to the world, I need it. And I've been subsisting on humans and the scraps I let myself feel from you." He stared eye to eye, wanting his demon to understand. "I shut you away, cut myself off from you because I didn't believe I could have you..."

"You do, though, you have me--" Crowley said. The poor dear was trying to reassure him.

He laughed, too delighted to hold back. "Oh, I do hope so. My dearest, you are a _banquet._ Laid out before me, never ending. I could make meals of you. I'm not certain I could go back, having tasted this, you must believe me."

"Angel, I know you love. I couldn't possibly not know." Crowley was smiling at him, that gentle smile he usually saved for when he thought no-one was looking.

"Why is that, then?"

"Can you see me?"

"Of course, but--"

"'Cause I haven't turned on a light."

"Wha--oh!" Aziraphale pulled a hand away from Crowley's back long enough to see a distinct glow. "How long?"

"Since the bus."

He let his head drop forward, rested it on Crowley's collarbone. "Hmm. And I thought I was doing so well."

"It's been a long day," Crowley said sympathetically.

There were lips in his hair, dropping a kiss to the top of his head. It was, it was _perfect,_ love wrapped around him and tied off with this small, casual intimacy, and he wanted more, and more and more.

He started to squash the impulse out of habit before realizing that he didn't need to. _Not ever again,_ he thought, and raised his head to capture Crowley's lips himself.

This pulled another pleased growl out of his demon, as did the sweep of hands down his back to settle at narrow hips.

Again it was Crowley who broke the kiss, although this time it was to move back along his jaw to his ear. Aziraphale found this a perfectly reasonable compromise and was definitely grateful for the support of the wall at his back. His knees were increasingly uninterested in stability.

"As long as we're confessing," Crowley murmured, nuzzling distractingly up against his ear, "I should probably tell you..."

"Hnngh?” He was to be expected to converse? With Crowley's breath hot on his neck, Crowley's tongue tracing his ear? "I mean, yes?"

"Go-- oh, angel. If you had any idea what you do to me, when you get what you want..."

"I…” That couldn't be right, surely. “What?"

"You're made for love. I’m--” Crowley’s teeth closed on his collarbone, just a nip, and he yelped. “Mmmm. I’m made for temptation,” the demon went on, sounding scandalously pleased with himself. “I'm made to see what people want, and encourage them to go after it. And if you only knew, if you knew what it _does to me_ when you get what you want…”

“What, ah, what does it do?” He was holding on to this conversation by his fingernails, really--Crowley, his beautiful, alluring Crowley, he was _everywhere,_ and Aziraphale was happily drowning in love and touch. He hauled his mind back to making words, because even still he could tell that this was _important._ “Tell me--Oh!--tell me, because--” His eyes fluttered closed. “Because I have--I want--oh, I want a great many things, you know.”

"You should have them." Crowley was breathless, absolutely radiating adoration. "I'll get them for you, all of them, just... Just let me be one of them," and that beloved honeyed voice, that he loved to hear go high with excitement or velvet with temptation, that voice dropped and shattered, broken all around him. "Just let me be one of them."

Somehow the kissing had stopped--they were holding each other too tightly for kissing, plastered together with his face buried in the angle of Crowley's neck.

"Oh, dearest. You're all of them."

Crowley melted into him, nuzzling into his shoulder, up next to his jaw and under his ear. Aziraphale was simply enjoying being surrounded by all the touch he'd denied himself--with the wall to his back and Crowley pressing into his front there was touch everywhere.

"Well, nearly all," he said at length.

"Nearly?" Crowley said, with such a tone that Aziraphale had to lift his head and look. Those lovely eyes had quite the twinkle to them. "Should I be insulted?"

“Oh, Crowley, I couldn’t possibly insult you. But someone did bring up food.” And as if to punctuate this, his human stomach gave a little rumble.

“Oh yes, I offer you anything you want. The world and all the nations therein. And you want a little nibble!”

“I have been to heaven and back today, dearest. Lunch was literally a million miles ago.”

“I'd ask what you want, but right now I think your options are limited to whatever takeaway places are actually open and delivering. I'm not sure I have any more miracles in me right now.”

“I might be able to fly, right now, just on happiness,” Aziraphale said, “but I’m not sure I’m up to summoning food up.”

“Good thing takeaway exists then, isn’t it? And that we don’t need miracles to cuddle.”

“Takeaway would be fine, love,” he said, and was rewarded by a tiny, wondering smile on Crowley’s face, breathtakingly unlike as usual sardonic smirk. “What was that?”

“I think I like it when you call me ‘love’.”

The light in the room grew brighter, because _of course it did,_ Aziraphale thought. He was the light in the room, and he might never actually be able to go to the theater again if he was going to continue being this besotted. “Then I shall do it more often.”

He let go of Crowley's back and reached up instead to hover just over his face... and again had trouble moving that last inch.

Crowley looked at him for a moment, then with another soft smile covered his hand and pulled it to his own jaw.

And oh, he was going to shatter or he was going to burst and either way it was glorious to hold that face he loved. Again he had to wrench his mind back on track. "My dear… the sensible thing to do would be to have some food and get some sleep. And we need to make a plan if we want to survive this."

"Oh, well. The sensible thing sounds like bollocks."

"And _when_ we survive this," Aziraphale said, "I should quite like to get my hands on every inch of your corporation until I burn out this blasted hesitation. Would you be willing to help me with that?"

"Ngk," said Crowley. "Hnngh."

***

In the end, after trials and tears and laughter and entirely new arrangements, they made a game of it.

"I want to touch you… here," he said, hovering his hand carefully.

Crowley took his hand and brought it that extra inch to rest on his hip, so he could marvel at skin like silk sliding warm under his fingers.

"I used to watch you walk, you know. I was never entirely sure if you were attempting to be alluring, or if it was just my own addled infatuation." He slid his hand up over hip and flank, sighing happily. "And you?"

"Here." Crowley grasped at the air just above his thigh. "You were always so strong, I used to wonder if you could carry me, too. Even before... Back when I didn't know what I felt, when I told myself I just sought you out for a chat, to hand you something sweet that would make you happy, get a quick thrill."

Aziraphale took his hand, pulled it in. Caught his breath when Crowley grabbed a good handful of flesh.

"Oh, yeah, like that. That's the stuff, when the angel gets what he wants." Crowley threw his head back in exaggerated ecstasy, and Aziraphale couldn't help but giggle.

"My turn, you wicked thing," Aziraphale laughed. He let his thumb trace one more line along Crowley's belly, then moved it to float over his chest. "I want to touch you here. This part, where the heart of you beats, where you held the children for two years."

Crowley's eyes shone, laughter forgotten as he took Aziraphale's hand and guided it to his humanish heart. 

"This is what I fell in love with," Aziraphale said. "My eyes saw your temptation, but my heart could never be fooled by artifice because I saw you singing to them, in the stinking, storming dark, and I was already lost, you know."

"You can't… you can't just say stuff like that in the middle of the game, angel."

"But why ever not, love? It's true."

"Because now I have to kiss you. You know that, right?"

"I was rather hopi--mmph!" Aziraphale said, cut off suddenly by a face full of demon. He decided it was quite a satisfactory close to this round.

They made a game of it, and they both always won. 

And somehow, oddly, no matter how dark it was they never needed any candles.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the end, y'all. I told you it would end up happy, despite all the wringing out our poor angel does of his heart.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who talked me through bits of this (see notes at beginning, esepcially), thanks so much for all your lovely comments, and I hope you enjoyed--stay safe and stay well, y'all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, y'all. Kudos are loved, comments are loved and read and treasured even if I'm sometimes bollocks about replying in a timely manner. this fandom legit keeps me going.


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